A Textual Study of Li Bai's "On the Road from Lishui"

The record in the old gazetteer

Volume 11 of the Kangxi edition of the Lishui County Gazetteer, the "Literature" section, carries a poem title ascribed to Li Bai:

自溧水道中哭王炎三首 李 白 — Kangxi Lishui County Gazetteer, 卷之十一·艺文志

Translated: Three Poems Mourning Wang Yan on the Road from Lishui, by Li Bai.

Only the "Literature" section of that edition has been examined for this site; no record of Li Bai's movements in Lishui has been found in its other volumes, and none is inferred from them.

The scenic-area account

A page run by the Wuxiang Water Town scenic area states that Li Bai left a number of poems in Lishui, including "Fenjin Well" and three poems "Mourning Wang Yan on the Road from Lishui". The page is published by the scenic area itself, cites no evidence, and carries limited authority.

The two readings of Lishui

One reading takes Lishui in the poem's title to mean present-day Lishui District in Nanjing, so that the poem was written while Li Bai was travelling through Lishui.

The other takes Lishui to mean a waterway near Liyang, so that "on the road" refers to a journey by water and has nothing to do with present-day Lishui.

Both readings are recorded in the source material held by this site; scholarly and other accounts differ, and this entry sets the two side by side without deciding between them.

A supporting strand from a weak source

A local promotional article of 2022, posted by the Weilihui account and reposted on Toutiao, states that Li Bai came to Lishui three times; that on the third occasion, in the first year of the Baoying era (761 CE), Li Bai, seriously ill, passed through Lishui and, on hearing that Wang Yan had died, wrote three poems of mourning, dying at Dangtu the following year. On its own logic this account falls under the first reading above, that Lishui in the title means present-day Lishui, and it is compatible with the fact that the old gazetteer includes the poem in volume 11.

That article is, however, local promotional material and cites no documentary evidence. Its account of Li Bai's own life, that he was pardoned on his way into exile in Yelang and returned to Lishui, is a popular narrative and is not accepted as fact here. Nor has its division of the three visits been checked against the self-annotations in the Complete Tang Poems and against chronological biographies. The account is therefore registered as a lead only, and is not used to raise the level of evidence for the first reading; the confidence of this entry remains low.

The record of the poem "Fenjin Well"

The poem "Fenjin Well" listed on the scenic-area page has a corresponding record in the old gazetteers held by this library. Volume 3 of the Kangxi Gazetteer of Lishui County, in the "Temples and Shrines" section of the Treatise on Establishments, records of the Baishi Temple:

白石觀在東南六十五里荊山中。《金陵志》云，舊傳卞和獲玉之地。殿有卞和塑像。觀有方池，李白詩云「白石分金井，丹砂布玉田」是也。井僅三四尺，投之以石，則水上沸如珠。田可七畝，井水溉之，俱屬觀內。觀為邑人陳譿重建。

Translated: The Baishi Temple lies sixty-five li to the south-east among the Jing Mountains. The Gazetteer of Jinling says it was the place where Bian He was said to have found jade. The hall contains a clay image of Bian He. Before the temple is a square pool, of which the poem of Li Bai says "white stone divides the golden well, cinnabar is spread over the jade fields". The well is only three or four chi; if a stone is dropped into it, the water boils up like pearls. The field can be seven mu, and the well water irrigates it; both belong to the temple. The temple was rebuilt by a native of the county, Chen Tan.

The entry quotes two lines of "Fenjin Well" with the words "the poem of Li Bai says", so it is an explicit record by the old gazetteer of the title and the authorship of the poem: the title is "Fenjin Well", the author is Li Bai, and what it refers to is the Baishi Temple area of Lishui, at Baishi Guan Village in Jingqiao Town today. The attribution of the poem therefore no longer rests only on the scenic-area page and the press, but has a layer of old gazetteer evidence behind it.

What must be kept apart is that this entry settles only the title, authorship and reference of "Fenjin Well"; it does not settle the question of what "Lishui" means in "Three Poems Mourning Wang Yan on the Road from Lishui". The two poems are separate matters and must not be used to corroborate one another. What the old gazetteer quotes is a two-line extract, not the whole poem, and this entry does not reconstruct the full text from it.

Uncertainties

First, what Lishui refers to in the poem's title is undecided. This site holds no collation of editions and no chronological biography of Li Bai, and the poem's inclusion in the old gazetteer does not by itself establish that it was written in present-day Lishui. The claim by the local promotional article that Li Bai passed through Lishui in 761 CE and wrote the mourning poems on hearing of Wang Yan's death is consistent with the first reading, but it rests on no documentary evidence and does not raise the level of evidence for that reading.

Second, the title, authorship and reference of the poem "Fenjin Well" can now rest on the entry on Baishi Temple in volume 3 of the old gazetteer, which gives Li Bai as the author and the title as "Fenjin Well", referring to the Baishi Temple area. But the old gazetteer quotes only a two-line extract, and whether the full text agrees with the record in the Complete Tang Poems has not been checked here.

Third, besides volume 11 of the Kangxi gazetteer, the entry on Baishi Temple in volume 3 has now been examined for this entry. Whether the remaining volumes record anything further about Li Bai's movements, or about anything connected with the mourning poems, such as a biography of Wang Yan or the location of his tomb, has not been checked.

Fourth, the life story of Li Bai given in the weak source quoted here, the local promotional article, is not accepted as fact, and its division of the three visits has not been checked against the self-annotations in the Complete Tang Poems or against chronological biographies.