No More Learning

Yuan now held a judicial post at Ningpo and the two were occasionally
able to meet.

In 824 his Governorship expired and he lived (with the nominal rank of
Imperial Tutor) at the village of Li-tao-li, near Lo-yang. It was here
that he took into his household two girls, Fan-su and Man-tz? , whose
singing and dancing enlivened his retreat. He also brought with him from
Hangchow a famous "Indian rock," and two cranes of the celebrated
"Hua-t'ing" breed. Other amenities of his life at this time were a
recipe for making sweet wine, the gift of Ch'? n Hao-hsien; a harp-melody
taught him by Ts'ui Hsuan-liang; and a song called "Autumn Thoughts,"
brought by the concubine of a visitor from Ssech'uan.

In 825 he became Governor of Soochow. Here at the age of fifty-three he
enjoyed a kind of second youth, much more sociable than that of thirty
years before; we find him endlessly picnicking and feasting. But after
two years illness obliged him to retire.

He next held various posts at the capital, but again fell ill, and in
829 settled at Lo-yang as Governor of the Province of Honan. Here his
first son, A-ts'ui, was born, but died in the following year.

In 831 Yuan Ch? n also died.

Henceforth, though for thirteen years he continued to hold nominal
posts, he lived a life of retirement.
In 832 he repaired an unoccupied
part of the Hsiang-shan monastery at Lung-m? n,[46] a few miles south of
Lo-yang, and lived there, calling himself the Hermit of Hsiang-shan.
Once he invited to dinner eight other elderly and retired officials; the
occasion was recorded in a picture entitled "The Nine Old Men at
Hsiang-shan. " There is no evidence that his association with them was
otherwise than transient, though legend (see "Memoires Concernant les
Chinois" and Giles, Biographical Dictionary) has invested the incident
with an undue importance. He amused himself at this time by writing a
description of his daily life which would be more interesting if it were
not so closely modelled on a famous memoir by T'ao Ch'ien. In the winter
of 839 he was attacked by paralysis and lost the use of his left leg.
After many months in bed he was again able to visit his garden, carried
by Ju-man, a favourite monk.

[46] Famous for its rock-sculptures, carved in the sixth and seventh
centuries.

In 842 Liu Yu-hsi, the last survivor of the four friends, and a constant
visitor at the monastery, "went to wander with Yuan Ch? n in Hades. " The
monk Ju-man also died.

The remaining years of Po's life were spent in collecting and arranging
his Complete Works. Copies were presented to the principal monasteries
(the "Public Libraries" of the period) in the towns with which he had
been connected. He died in 846, leaving instructions that his funeral
should be without pomp and that he should be buried not in the family
tomb at Hsia-kuei, but by Ju-man's side in the Hsiang-shan Monastery. He
desired that a posthumous title should not be awarded.

The most striking characteristic of Po Chu-i's poetry is its verbal
simplicity.