Exile named him Dongpo and freed his best verse
Su Shi (1037–1101) passed the jinshi exam at nineteen with his brother, then spent a career in factional exile. On a Huangzhou farm called Eastern Slope he took the name Dongpo—and wrote the poems that made him immortal.
Su Shi, courtesy name Zizhan, was born 8 January 1037 in Meishan, Sichuan, son of Su Xun and brother of Su Zhe—a literary household. His given name Shi names a chariot's front crossbar; his father hoped the railing's low profile would teach restraint the outspoken son never fully learned. Daoist village schooling, then home teaching by Lady Cheng and Su Xun, prepared both brothers. In 1057, at nineteen, they earned jinshi under Ouyang Xiu's ancient-prose exam rules and became celebrities; Su's 1061 decree exams sealed the fame. Emperor Renzong noticed; Ouyang became patron.
Office across China included Hangzhou, where he built the West Lake pedestrian causeway still called Sudi. Conflict with Wang Anshi's reform faction—especially a poem against the salt monopoly—brought charges of criticizing the emperor. First exile (1080–1086) to Huangzhou meant a title without stipend. With a friend's help he farmed Dongpo in 1081, practiced Buddhist meditation, and wrote much of his finest poetry plus the calligraphy Han Shi Tie. Recalled in 1086, he was banished again (1094–1100) to Huizhou and Hainan's Danzhou; the Dongpo Academy rose there in 1098 on his old site. Wang Anshi, retired since 1076, had meanwhile grown cordial with him. Shen Kuo once forwarded Su's verse to court as possibly abusive—fuel later used by Li Ding and Shu Dan—yet the two men also cooperated across party lines.
Three marriages shaped his private music: Wang Fu (1039–1065) left son Su Mai and the ci "River Town" dream poem written a decade after her death; Wang Runzhi (1048–1093) bore Su Dai and Su Guo through twenty-five years of ups and downs; Wang Zhaoyun (1062–1095), once a Qiantang courtesan bought young in Hangzhou, shared Buddhist-Taoist seeking and died at Huizhou. About 2,700 poems and 800 letters survive; some 350 ci poems, pioneering the bold háofàng school, carry his deepest legacy alongside Eight Masters prose and Song Four Masters calligraphy. Pardoned in 1100 toward Chengdu, he died en route at Changzhou on 24 August 1101, aged sixty-four—shrines and Red Cliff paintings following a life where politics silenced the official and liberated the poet.
Source: Su Shi
