Sima Xiangru
Sima Xiangru (c. 179-117 B.C.E.) was a notable Chinese poet and writer from the Western Han Dynasty, renowned for his contributions to the literary form known as fu, or rhapsody. Born into a prosperous family in Chengdu, he received a comprehensive education in literature, history, and philosophy. Although he initially served in the imperial court, he found greater inspiration as part of the literary circle at the court of Liu Wu, where he began producing celebrated poetic works. His most famous compositions include the *Zixu fu* and *Shanglin fu*, both of which exemplify his ability to meld intricate imagery with elaborate language to create vivid depictions of nature and imperial life.
Sima's life was marked by a romantic narrative involving Zhuo Wenjun, which has resonated through Chinese culture as one of the earliest successful love stories based on mutual affection. His works not only showcase his poetic prowess but also carry underlying political and moral commentary, reflecting on the nature of rulership and governance. Sima Xiangru's literary legacy has had a profound impact on Chinese literature and continues to be celebrated for its innovative style and emotional depth. His life and works remain significant in the study of classical Chinese literature and cultural history.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Sima Xiangru
Chinese poet, scholar-official, and musician
- Born: 179 b.c.e.
- Birthplace: Chengdu, China
- Died: 117 b.c.e.
- Place of death: Maoling, Nan Yue, China
China’s greatest composer of a type of rhapsodic poem in a complex and highly stylized language, Sima Xiangru also was one of Imperial China’s most revered players of the seven-string zither prized by the literati for its evocative expression. The marriage of Sima Xiangru and his young wife Zhuo Wenjun is a classic love story in traditional Chinese culture.
Early Life
Sima Xiangru (sur-mah shyang-rew) lived during the Western, or Former, Han Dynasty (206 b.c.e.-23 c.e.). Information about his life, including versions of his most important writings, comes primarily from biographies—largely similar to each other—in the early histories the Shiji (first century b.c.e.; Records of the Grand Historian of China, 1960, rev. ed. 1993) of Sima Qian (Ssu-ma Ch’ien, 145-86 b.c.e.) and the Han Shu (also known as Qian Han Shu, completed first century c.e.; The History of the Former Han Dynasty, 1938-1955) of Ban Gu (Pan Ku; 32-92 c.e.).
Sima Xiangru was from a well-to-do family in Chengdu (Ch’eng-tu), the principal city of the prosperous southwestern region of Shu (modern-day Sichuan Province). He was provided with an excellent education in literature, history, and philosophy and is said to also have studied swordsmanship in his youth. Sometime around age twenty-five he was able to use his family wealth to purchase an appointment at the imperial court. Finding this posting not to his liking due to the emperor’s lack of interest in literary composition, he resigned on the pretext of illness in 151 or 150 b.c.e. and joined the literary coterie gathered under the patronage of the emperor’s younger brother Liu Wu (r. 168-143 b.c.e.), then king of the state of Liang (in modern-day Henan Province). Sima Xiangru had been impressed by Liu Wu and his entourage during their recent stay in the imperial capital; the group included such literary luminaries as Zou Yang (Tsou Yang; c. 206-129 b.c.e.), Mei Sheng (Mei Cheng; d. 141 b.c.e.), and Zhuang Ji (Chuang Chi, also known as Yan Ji; c. 188-105 b.c.e.). It is during the period when Sima Xiangru was associated with the Liang court circle that he produced the first of the poetic compositions that would gain him recognition and praise both in his time and throughout history.
Life’s Work
Sima Xiangru composed the Zixu fu (second century b.c.e.; Sir Fantasy, 1971) a few years after joining the group of highly talented literati at Liu Wu’s court. It was an imagistic tour-de-force description of the royal hunting preserve in the old state of Chu (located in Hubei and Hunan Provinces), framed as a dialogue between two characters who boast of the relative merits of their states. Sir Fantasy, on a visit to the state of Qi (located in Shandong Province), is taken on a hunt in the royal park. When asked about his experience, he launches into a description of the vast Yunmeng Park in his native state of Chu, detailing the park’s natural attributes and the fantastic progress of the royal hunt. His rhapsodic outburst overwhelms his interlocutor and he is accused of poor manners and inappropriate, overt boasting. An example of the descriptive vocabulary and complex prosody Sima Xiangru used throughout the composition is seen in David Knechtges’s translation (1987, vol. 2, pp. 55-57):
The mountains:
Another example (Knechtges, p. 63) recounts the carnage of hunting:
Swift and sudden, fleet and fast,
When Liu Wu died in 144 b.c.e., Sima Xiangru returned, impoverished, to his home in Shu. However, he soon found the support of an old acquaintance, now a local official in Linqiong, a smaller town to the southwest of Chengdu, where he soon attracted the attention of some of the richest men in the area. One of these, an iron merchant and manufacturer named Zhuo Wangsun, whose household included eight hundred indentured servants, paid a visit to Sima Xiangru and was immediately won over, all the more so after Sima Xiangru performed a few songs for him on the qin (seven-string zither). As it happened, Zhuo Wangsun had a recently widowed seventeen-year-old daughter who had a passion for music, and thus began one of the most renowned love stories of early China.
Sima Xiangru was invited to the Zhuo estate, where he arrived fully intent on winning the rich man’s daughter. While Sima Xiangru was ostensibly entertaining Zhuo Wangsun by playing the qin during the drinking festivities, his music and song really were directed toward seducing the daughter, Zhuo Wenjun (Cho Wen-chü), who spied on him through a crack in the doorway and lost her heart. Sima Xiangru bribed the young lady’s servants, and the two eloped to Chengdu. Disinherited by her father and with no other means of support, Zhuo Wenjun soon convinced her new husband that they should move back to Linqiong, where they could borrow from her brother. They sold their property and set up a small wine shop, where she minded the bar and he washed the pots. Zhuo Wangsun was mortified, but after a time he was persuaded to reconcile with his daughter. He sent his daughter servants, cash, and all of the property she had accumulated in her first marriage, and the couple returned to live in wealth on an estate in Chengdu.
Sima Xiangru is portrayed as a confident man with great flair, although with a weak physical constitution and some tendency toward aloofness. The song that he is supposed to have played to woo Zhuo Wenjun, with unambiguously pathetic and provocative lyrics, is about finding one’s ideal mate. The highly attractive characters, complex web of circumstances, and evocative, romantic nature of the tale have contributed to its perennial popularity. It also is one of the few romantic stories in which a marriage for love finds success, rather than ending prematurely and tragically.
After a period of easy living, around the year 137 b.c.e., a townsman from Shu gave a copy of the Zixu fu to the recently installed emperor Wudi (Wu-ti; r. 140-87 b.c.e.). The sixteen-year-old emperor was greatly impressed and exclaimed that he regretted that the author of the piece was of a different time. Surprised to learn that the author was alive, the emperor had Sima Xiangru brought to the capital. The poet suggested that, as his previous compositions merely concerned the affairs of vassal lords, he wished now to compose a fu (rhapsody or long descriptive literary work in a complex and highly stylized language) on the excursions and hunts of the Son of Heaven for the emperor’s delectation. This lengthy two-part composition pairs the Zixu fu with a new, longer, and more embellished sequel, Shanglin fu (second century b.c.e.; imperial park).
This fu continues the fictional discourse of three interlocutors: Sir Fantasy (Zixu; “hollow, empty words”), who delineates the grandness of the hunting preserve in Chu; Master Improbable (Wuyou xiansheng; “how could something like this exist?”) of the state of Qi, who upbraids him for his churlishness; and Lord No-such (Wushigong; “someone who does not exist”), who humbles them both with his exhaustive exposition on the majesty of the Shanglin hunting park of the Former Han emperors, located to the west of the capital city Chang-an (modern-day Xian, Shaanxi Province), adding a final didactic section on the moral correctness of curbing excess. As the satiric names of its characters suggest, the fu is full of hyperbole, exhibiting a descriptive power and imagistic vocabulary that surpasses anything found in Chinese literature. It is indisputably the greatest of all fu and one of the monuments of world literature.
The Shanglin fu continues the imagistic descriptive mode of the Zixu fu, cataloging the attributes of the locale and the progress of the hunt. Replete with exaggerated exuberance and a confluence of the real and the imaginary, it weaves together sections about the park’s topography and geophysical qualities, the diversity of its flora and fauna, the terrible efficacy and carnage of the hunt, the architectural intricacies of the hunting lodges, and the emperor’s elegant entourage. Finally, the fu shows the emperor becoming aware of the implications of such extravagance and setting his attention to reform, implementing economic and land-use policies favorable to the people and adopting proper administrative and ritual conduct for the correct governance of the empire.
The fu is a euphonic and rhythmic prosodic form comprising both rhymed and unrhymed sections; early fu were meant for oral recitation, even while being highly valued and influential as written texts. The ornate language of Sima Xiangu’s fu is quite unrivaled and often entirely original, and had a tremendous influence on Chinese descriptive vocabulary. Sonorous and euphemistic disyllabic expressions and binomial descriptives that characteristically are amalgams of alliteration and/or rhyme bring a palpable sensuality and a rhythmic sense of flow to the description. Whole lines often consist of paired disyllabic words that impart an affective image or impression rather than a static or unambiguous likeness. For example, in Knechtges’s superb English rendition (1987, p. 77), which captures much of the force of the original (although in translation its musicality can only be imagined), the movement of dashing rivers is described as:
Soaring and leaping, surging and swelling,
Elsewhere (Knechtges, 1987, p. 109), palace women are described as:
Beguiling and bewitching, elegant and refined,
Sima Xiangru’s fu ostensibly was a depiction of the imperial hunting preserve, but the fantastic portrayal might better be seen as a symbolic re-imagining of the park as a microcosmic representation of the realm and its full panoply of plants and animals, where all is under the control of the enlightened and just emperor. Emperor Wudi was suitably impressed, swayed by the rhetorical flourishes of Sima Xiangru’s literary extravaganza. His lavish description gained Sima Xiangru the emperor’s favor, and he again took up a position at court.
Sima Xiangru was twice sent as imperial envoy to his native Shu. Around 133 b.c.e. his mission was to alleviate tensions that had arisen due to an imperial general’s oppressive treatment of the local population in an attempt to assert Han rule over the area. For this, Sima Xiangru composed a proclamation to the local governors on the part of the emperor assuring them of the emperor’s good will. One year later, Sima Xiangru was sent to bring more of the area under Han control; to allay criticism from some of the emperor’s economic advisors, Sima Xiangru composed a dialogue between the elders of Shu and an imperial envoy arguing for the benefits of benevolent Han interests. Sima Xiangru was successful in opening up new roads and extending imperial authority over the various ethnic populations; while in Shu, he was honored by his wealthy and influential father-in-law.
Sima Xiangru was a particularly talented and persuasive writer; he is said to have stuttered, yet nevertheless he was especially renowned for his fu, a form generally intended for oral performance. Following his success with his Shanglin fu, around 120 b.c.e. he composed for the emperor Da ren fu (c. second century b.c.e.; The Great Man, 1996), which both praises the grandness of his sovereign and also, through indirection, admonishes him for his excesses. The Great Man is characterized as a transcendent being in control of mystical arts who goes on a distant journey through the cosmos, freed of the constraints of the material world; the emperor again was greatly pleased, as if he himself had roamed about heaven and earth. While some of Sima Xiangru’s writings would seem, at face value, to be laudatory or occasional compositions written after excursions with the emperor, most of his writings also carried a clear didactic lesson or a political commentary. His fu lamenting the second Qin emperor, written after a visit to the tomb of the last ruler of the previous dynasty, clearly addressed the consequences of inattention to correct rulership.
Sima Xiangru retired to Maoling (just west of modern Xianyang, Shaanxi) around the year 119 b.c.e., where he passed away in 117 b.c.e. Shortly before his death, hearing of the poet’s poor state of health, the emperor personally sent a messenger to collect his writings to ensure that they were not lost to posterity. However, the functionary arrived after he had died; he was told that Sima Xiangru never kept copies of his writings, but that he had left behind one composition in anticipation of the man’s arrival. This was a memorial to the throne, which Sima Xiangru had composed at the end of his life, recommending that the emperor perform for the first time the important sacrificial rites of legitimation at Mount Tai (in Shandong); this resulted in the institution of a state cult five years later, and an imperial progress to each of three mountains for the official sacrifices.
Sima Xiangru is said to have composed twenty-nine rhapsodies in all, but only five still are extant. All of his writings display highly crafted rhetorical flourishes. He also is credited with having compiled a dictionary—which would seem appropriate for such a wordsmith—and a few other writings, including the two songs that won the love of Zhuo Wenjun; these songs and their instrumental music still are part of the qin repertory.
Sima Xiangru is described sometimes as a dashing fellow, sometimes as a quiet, frail sort who disdained high company. Due to both his literary excellence and his personality, he shows up as a character in later writings, for instance in the fu by Xie Huilian (Hsieh Hui-lien; 379-433) on snow. The romantic love story of Sima Xiangru and Zhuo Wenjun has been the subject of operas and other dramatic productions; one example is Qin xin ji (sixteenth century c.e.; record of the heart of the zither). Several places in China have landmarks commemorating places where Sima Xiangru is said to have played the qin, enticed his lover, or had his wine shop.
Significance
Sima Xiangru is one of the most famous literary personalities of traditional China. His writings had a tremendous influence on Chinese descriptive language and literature, and his life story has struck a romantic chord throughout the millennia. During the Han Dynasty, he perfected the highly embellished literary form and style known as fu, or rhapsody, perhaps the most exuberant and complex of Chinese forms of descriptive literature. His long, imaginative compositions wove together fantastic images in an outpouring of alliterative and rhyming descriptive expressions that gave sensual impressions of movement, sound, and color, a mode of expression whose evocative nature has often been copied. The story of Sima Xiangru’s musical seduction of Zhuo Wenjun and the story of their free and independent life underlies many later romances. It is a very rare example of a successful marriage on the basis of love, perhaps the first in literary history, and it is all the more cherished because of its happy ending.
Bibliography
Gong, Kechang. Studies on the Han Fu. Translated and edited by David R. Knechtges, et al. New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 1997. Includes an excellent chapter on Sima Xiangru’s literary writings.
Idema, W. L. “The Story of Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju and Cho Wen-chü in Vernacular Literature of the Yüan and Early Ming Dynasties.” T’ung Pao 70, nos. 1-3 (1984): 60-109. Full treatment of the love story and its influence.
Knechtges, David R. “Problems of Translating Descriptive Binomes in the Fu.” Tamkang Review 15, nos.1-4 (1985): 329-347. Good introduction to aspects of the distinctive language used by Sima Xiangru and others.
Sage, Steven F. Ancient Sichuan and the Unification of China. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Chapter 6 discusses Sima Xiangru’s diplomatic missions.
Xiao, Tong. Rhapsodies on Sacrifices, Hunting, Travel, Sightseeing, Palaces and Halls, Rivers and Seas. Vol. 2 of Wen xuan. Translated by David R. Knechtges. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987. Elegant and true translations of Sima Xiangru’s most important writings with copious annotation. The introduction also discusses his use of language.