Li Qingzhao grew up in a scholarly family. A good family atmosphere made her carefree in childhood, and traditional family education laid a solid foundation for her literary creation. Therefore, at a young age, Li Qingzhao has a poetic talent beyond her peers.
Most of Li Qingzhao's girlhood poems are full of laughter and youthful style. During the Northern Song Dynasty, Li Qingzhao, who was only eighteen years old, married Zhao Mingcheng in the year of Jing Guoyuan (A.D. 1 1) and became famous from then on.
After marriage, the husband and wife lead, praise, and be wise, and write poems together. It can be said that they are husband and wife who share weal and woe, and they are soul mates. So much for the so-called "love is like oxygen" marriage.
Coincidentally, both Zhao Mingcheng and Li Qingzhao have the habit of collecting stones. Every time he comes home from school, he will bring back precious ancient epigraphy books to Li Qingzhao, and they appreciate the taste relatively. When they have nothing to do, they will make a pot of tea, guess which book the historical allusions come from and have a good time.
Li Qingzhao's comfortable and happy marriage only lasted for more than ten years. With her husband Zhao Mingcheng in a foreign land, they often get together less and leave more. In the days when husband and wife are separated, thoughts and sadness come to mind. Li Qingzhao wrote lyrics to send homesickness from afar, which is why we learned the famous sentence "Mo Dao is not charming, the curtain rolls west, and people are thinner than yellow flowers" in Chinese books.
However, the troubles brought by reality to Li Qingzhao are not just as simple as leaving. After the prosperous scene of "Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival" in the Northern Song Dynasty, the national military defense collapsed in an instant in front of Jin Guo's fighters.
In AD 1 127, Jin Jun led by Wan Yan Wang Zong and Wan Yan Han Zong attacked Tokyo, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty (now Kaifeng, Henan), and the city was looted. A large number of more than 3,000 people, including Song Huizong, Zhao's royal relatives, concubines and courtiers, were also taken to the north by Jin Jun captives, which directly led to the demise of the Northern Song Dynasty.
From then on, the world was in chaos, the country was in chaos, and rebellions began to surge everywhere, and Li Qingzhao's life was no longer stable.
As a survivor, a branch of Zhao became emperor in Yingtianfu (now Shangqiu, Henan Province) and established the Southern Song Dynasty, namely. After Song Gaozong ascended the throne, he didn't want to welcome his father Song Huizong Evonne or his brother Song Qinzong Zhao Huan. The only thing he wants to get back is his biological mother Webster's dictionary. She sent people to negotiate with Xu Jinguo many times, but failed to get Xu Jinguo to release him.
In order to escape the war, Li Qingzhao and Zhao Mingcheng embarked on a journey to the south. The pommel horse was tired all the way, and the road was blocked and long. The stones, antiques, calligraphy and paintings that the husband and wife spent many years collecting were also scattered and lost during the escape.
1 129, Zhao Mingcheng became the magistrate of Jiangning. One night, the disorderly party rebelled. As a local governor, Zhao Mingcheng not only didn't stick to his post to direct the rebellion, but fled over the wall with a rope.
Afterwards, Zhao Mingcheng was dismissed by the Southern Song Dynasty court. Although Li Qingzhao looks like a weak woman, she is full of patriotic blood. She was deeply ashamed of her husband's escape from the cold. When their husband and wife fled to the bank of Wujiang River, Li Qingzhao looked at the place where Chu overlord Xiang Yu drew his sword and committed suicide. His emotions surged and he blurted out a famous "summer quatrain":
Zhao Mingcheng stood behind Li Qingzhao, listening to her affectionate recitation word by word, and was extremely ashamed.
Desperate, Li Qingzhao plans to live in seclusion in the mountains with her husband Zhao Mingcheng for the rest of her life. However, on his way to seclusion, he received an order from the Southern Song Dynasty court, and Zhao Mingcheng was appointed as the satrap of Huzhou. When Li Qingzhao had not come out of the shame of national subjugation and the pain of losing her treasure, her life suffered another fatal blow.
In the summer of the third year of Jianyan in the Southern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1 129), Zhao Mingcheng was in a hurry to go to Huzhou for his post, and unfortunately suffered from heatstroke on the way. But he hurried to see a doctor and took a lot of cold medicine, which led to the opposite result. He can't afford to get sick, and the doctor can't save him after all his efforts.
Zhao Mingcheng left his last words, asking his wife, Li Qingzhao, to protect the only ancient epigraphy they had collected for many years and continue to finish the finishing work of epigraphy compiled by the husband and wife.
From then on, in Fly with Me, the couple who once loved each other and had Canada, only Li Qingzhao was left, and they lost their lives. She was forty-five years old that year. No children, no daughters, loneliness and helplessness, mountains and rivers shaking, family breakdown. Li Qingzhao's life plummeted, from a famous lady with poems, books, tea and wine to a wandering widow who died in the country.
The emaciated Li Qingzhao followed the refugees who fled to Hangzhou. She was tired and weather-beaten all the way, but she couldn't stand the torture of the world and finally fell ill. When I was alone, Zhang Ruzhou appeared in Li Qingzhao's sight and became a pain in Li Qingzhao's heart for the rest of her life.
At that time, Zhang Ruzhou was the right Chengwulang, the audit department of each army. This official position is mainly responsible for reviewing the grain, grass and salary of the army. When I first met this man, he was like a refined gentleman. He is caring and attentive to Li Qingzhao, and he is meticulous. This kind of unprepared care is like giving charcoal in the snow, which makes Li Qingzhao, who is exhausted physically and mentally, feel the warmth of the world again. Therefore, without much consideration, Li Qingzhao resolutely decided to remarry against the secular trend.
However, people have ulterior motives, and the truth of life is far more cruel than imagined. After the marriage, Zhang Ruzhou's ambition began to be gradually exposed. It turned out that he was greedy for the name and color of Li Qingzhao, the first talented woman in the world at that time, and the second was greedy for the priceless stones and stone cultural relics collected by Li Qingzhao, trying to possess people and things.
Some of these stone calligraphy and paintings were lost in the escape, and the only remaining part of Li Qingzhao was regarded as life. Moreover, The Story of the Stone has not been edited, and it is even more impossible to hand it over to Zhang Ruzhou. Zhang Ruzhou was very disappointed with this, and the contradiction between husband and wife began to increase day by day, even adding bad words to Li Qingzhao.
Li Qingzhao soon saw through Zhang Ruzhou's true colors and decided to divorce him. However, according to the law of the Song Dynasty, if a wife sues her husband, he will be imprisoned for two years regardless of the outcome. But if she doesn't get divorced, Li Qingzhao will die for the rest of her life.
Li Qingzhao, who was in a dilemma, finally decided to get rid of the evil husband, preferring to go to jail and end the marriage.
Therefore, Li Qingzhao collected evidence, denounced Zhang Ruzhou's crime of corruption and defrauding official positions, and filed for divorce. In the face of hard evidence, Zhang Ruzhou was exiled to Liuzhou, Guangxi, and Li Qingzhao was put into prison according to the laws of the Song Dynasty.
Under the mediation and rescue of Zhao Mingcheng's cousin, Qin Chongli, a bachelor of the Imperial Academy, Song Gaozong Zhao Gou promised leniency. After nine days in prison, Li Qingzhao was released. Her absurd marriage with Zhang Ruzhou in less than 100 days came to an end.
After experiencing all kinds of hardships in life, Li Qingzhao's inner depression and anguish have also been released in her poem "Seeking Sound Slow":
In the first song "Looking for a Slow Voice", she described what she saw, heard and felt in the last autumn, expressing Li Qingzhao's turbulent sadness caused by the ruin of the country and the rise and fall of the world.
1 133, Song Gaozong Zhao Gou once again sent Han Xiaoyu, special envoy of the Tang Dynasty, and Hu Songnian, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, to negotiate with Xu Jin, demanding that Xu Jin send back his mother Ren Xian, and expressing condolences to the two emperors, Song Huizong and Song Qinzong, who were imprisoned in the north. Li Qingzhao wrote an ancient poem and a metrical poem with passion to bid farewell. The poem "I want to send blood and tears to the mountains and rivers, and sprinkle a mound of soil on the Dongshan Mountain" sincerely expresses Li Qingzhao's concern for the people in trouble and is full of strong patriotic passion for the desire to counterattack aggression and recover lost land.
In the year of 1 140, Li Qingzhao finally finished sorting out the Story of the Stone and wrote a preface. Since then, she has lived in seclusion in Hangzhou, regardless of the world. Li Qingzhao's ci poems in the latter half of his life are mostly written with bold and unconstrained strokes, which are regarded as "Yi 'an style" by later generations.
Although Li Qingzhao had two marriages in her life, she had no children. Her poems in her later years reveal the bitterness and sadness of life.
Even Liu Chenweng, a patriotic poet at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, couldn't help feeling when reading Li Qingzhao's "eternal happiness, sunset red melts gold": "Since I first read this word, I couldn't help crying. Three years have passed, and every time I pick it up and read it again, I still burst into tears. "
Li Qingzhao grew up in the Northern Song Dynasty, and her carefree childhood and happy life in the first half of her life came from that era. However, in the Southern Song Dynasty, when the country was broken and displaced, Li Qingzhao deeply realized the joys and sorrows of the world and the warmth and coldness of human feelings. These heavy feelings settled down and were vividly expressed in her later years' ci, just like the mood described in this poem Linjiang Xian:
This poem, with Yongmei as its theme, uses plum blossoms as a metaphor for Li Qingzhao himself, expressing loneliness and sadness of dying. Now, the sadness in my heart has become an endless sorrow of "cutting constantly, reasoning is still chaotic" The poem also expresses the feeling of homesickness and helplessness in his later years through the layer-by-layer comparison of past and present joys and sorrows.
In particular, the last sentence in the word "it's boring to try the lamp, but it's unintentional to walk through the snow" reveals Li Qingzhao's inner despair, and there is embarrassment between the lines.
In the 25th year of Shaoxing (A.D. 1 155), Li Qingzhao passed away quietly in extreme loneliness.
As a graceful and restrained poet, Li Qingzhao's ci mostly writes about the leisure life in the first half of his life, which is fresh and handsome; In the second half of his life, he lamented his life experience and was sad. Li Qingzhao was named "Yi 'an Jushi", but she never found that quiet and stable residence in her life.
In the face of ups and downs in life, Li Qingzhao has always struggled with her fate with unyielding personality and independent character, and has also made her the first talented woman in history.
Although Li Qingzhao has left, her literary treasure "Yi 'an Style" poetry is unique in the Song Dynasty and has been passed down to this day.