Poetry Bones, Mountains and Rivers

[Imagined Literary Tradition] [Academy Growth] [Poetry and Mechanisms] [Against Cliches and Rat Race Culture]

In an age when the literary tradition had withered, scholars across the land memorized templates, recited pass-the-exam incantations, and became marionettes in a sea of practice questions. The Censorate in charge of the literary tradition issued an "Edict to Delete Poetry": any poem deemed irrelevant to the times was to be burned.

Qi Yan, a poor student, entered the academy carrying an old bamboo case and half a tattered poetry manuscript. He knew nothing about predicting exam questions; all he could do was read the currents of the world through poetry. Others mocked him for being shabby and poor, but with a single "Qinyuanchun," he set three conditions, making every student in the academy obediently hand over their cram guides.

He sought the heart of the mirror, explored the Southern Sea, and guarded the Northern Wastes. He learned to hear the rhythm of hammer blows from a blacksmith, and to sing boatmen's songs from an old woman at the ferry. On the back of a paper bearing the "Pass Every Exam Incantation," he made a rubbing of a second poem-bone hidden by a Mirror Official of the former dynasty.

When a powerful minister laid a vast trap, certain he could banish Qi Yan to the ends of the earth, Qi Yan instead returned to his hometown and opened an academy beside his grandmother's stove. You ban one folk song, and I'll teach my students ten. You preach shortcuts to a hundred-point score in thirty days, and I'll teach my students not to cheat the exam or themselves.

Poetry's true bones were never in the tattered manuscripts. They were in the flicker of the kitchen fire, in the blacksmith's hammer strokes, and in every ordinary, lovable corner of the human world.