When Poets Defy Geography: The Curious Case of Misplaced Rivers

The great Han dynasty writer Sima Xiangru (179–117 BCE) once penned a lavish description of the Shanglin Park imperial gardens, claiming eight rivers—including the Dan, Zi Yuan, Ba, Chan, Jing, and Wei—”flowed east into Lake Tai (Taihu).” Tang scholar Li Shan’s commentary even identified Taihu as Lake Zhenze. But here’s the geographical hiccup: all eight rivers historically fed into the Yellow River, not the eastern lake. This poetic liberty mirrors later literary exaggerations, like Bai Juyi’s Song of Everlasting Sorrow misplacing Emperor Xuanzong’s Sichuan escape route near Mount Emei (which lay far from his actual path), or Du Fu’s hyperbolic description of a 2,000-foot-tall cypress tree with a comically slender 7-foot diameter.

Such creative geography and proportions reveal a timeless tension between artistic flourish and factual precision. Sima Xiangru’s fu (rhapsody) style prioritized grandeur over cartography, using phrases like “vast, swirling waves” (灏溔潢漾) to evoke awe. Yet as Song polymath Shen Kuo dryly noted in his Dream Pool Essays, these descriptions crumble under scrutiny—like calculating the mythical giant Fangfeng’s body as a “pancake” when scaling his 9-acre girth to Zhou-era measurements.

The Scarlet Robe Incident: When Fashion Sparked a Religious Crisis

In a bizarre 11th-century episode, a southern Chan Buddhist monk arrived in the capital wearing a striking red-striped kasaya robe. Unfamiliar with the Southern School’s sartorial codes, local monks denounced him as a heretic and hauled him before the magistrate. The baffled prefect, after prolonged deliberation, made a Solomonic ruling: freeing the monk but confiscating the robe to adorn a statue of Mahakasyapa at Baoci Temple.

This incident illuminates the North-South sectarian divide in Chinese Buddhism. The Southern Chan (Zen) tradition, championed by the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, embraced simplicity and spontaneity—qualities mirrored in their unconventional robes. The northern clergy’s reaction exposed their rigid orthodoxy, while the magistrate’s compromise (neither endorsing nor condemning) reflected pragmatism. As Shen Kuo wryly observed: the provincial monks lacked vision, but the magistrate “had one discerning eye.”

The “Bellyache Ledger”: How Song Dynasty Bureaucrats Dodged Night Shifts

The Imperial Library (馆阁) maintained a notorious值班 log nicknamed the “Bellyache Ledger” (害肚历). Officials on night duty could skip shifts by citing stomachaches—but only four times consecutively. By the fifth night, even the most “afflicted” had to report. This bureaucratic farce originated from rigid Song dynasty civil service rules that mandated nightly rotations among scholarly editors.

Shen Kuo’s documentation of this practice offers a rare glimpse into the unglamorous side of imperial academia. The “four-day grace period” likely balanced institutional needs with scholar-officials’ social obligations. Notably, during the reformist熙宁 era (1068–1077), low-ranking officials saw salary increases—a policy Shen praised as foundational for cultivating integrity (廉隅). His inclusion of a poverty-stricken county lieutenant’s sarcastic poem (“My family still eats chaff, yet you beg for my rice?”) underscores how meager pre-reform wages bred corruption.

The Legacy of Creative Truths: From Han Hyperbole to Modern Mythmaking

These anecdotes collectively reveal how premodern Chinese literati navigated truth and artifice. Sima Xiangru’s “eight rivers” flourish followed the fu tradition’s maximalist aesthetics, where emotional resonance trumped precision. Similarly, Du Fu’s exaggerated柏树 served metaphorical purposes—its impossible dimensions symbolizing Zhuge Liang’s towering legacy.

Yet Shen Kuo’s critiques mark an early empiricist impulse. His mockery of Fangfeng’s “pancake” proportions prefigures modern fact-checking, while the “Bellyache Ledger” exposes institutional absurdities still recognizable in today’s workplaces. Most enduringly, the red robe incident became a cultural shorthand for discerning substance over appearances—a lesson echoing in contemporary debates about tradition and innovation.

From mislabeled rivers to fabricated ailments, these historical vignettes remind us that human institutions—whether poetic, religious, or bureaucratic—have always danced between idealism and reality. The “bellyaches” of the Song librarians might just be the ancient equivalent of modern “server maintenance” excuses, proving some truths transcend eras.