The Dongpo Academy — the poet at the end of the world

The greatest poet at the end of the world

Su Shi, known as Su Dongpo, lived from 1037 to 1101 and is considered in China one of the greatest poets of all time. He was also an essayist, calligrapher, painter, senior official — and a passionate cook: a famous dish of braised pork belly still bears his name.

His career was a constant up and down. Because he wrote openly against the reform policies of his time, he was exiled several times, each time further from the court: first to Huangzhou on the Yangtze, then to Huizhou in the south, and finally to Danzhou on Hainan, at the very edge of the empire.

The last stage of exile

He arrived in Danzhou in July 1097, aged sixty. He was accompanied only by his youngest son Su Guo, then in his mid-twenties, who gave up his own career to look after his father. The family stayed behind on the mainland.

Hainan was then considered a place where you couldn't live: hot, humid, full of fever, without books or scholars. A Tang-era chancellor had already lamented in his exile poem that the way there led through the gate of ghosts. For a man of that age, exile to Hainan was considered a death sentence in instalments.

Three bans

The court had issued strict rules: the exile was not to receive state rations, not to live in an official residence and not to sign any documents. The local military commander, an admirer, nevertheless initially housed father and son in an official building. When the opponents at court found out, the two were thrown out and the commander lost his post.

Su Dongpo wrote to a friend at the time, roughly, that he had no meat to eat here, no medicine when he was ill, no house to live in, no friends to travel with, no coal in winter and no cool water in summer.

A hut in the palm grove

With his last savings he bought a plot of land in the south of the town. Locals helped him build a few huts in a grove of sugar palms, which he named after these palms. Here he lived, laid out a vegetable garden and wrote.

Many visitors today take the academy for his home. That's not right: the site of the hut is on the other side of town and is now a small memorial of its own with an archaeological dig.

The house you bring wine to

His most important friend in Danzhou was Li Ziyun, a local scholar with a small library. In 1098 friends and students pooled their money and built a hall next to his house where Su Dongpo could teach and receive guests. He called it the “Hall Where One Brings Wine” — after an old story about students who brought their teacher wine in order to learn from him.

Here he taught students from Han and Li families. One of them, Jiang Tangzuo, shortly after Su Dongpo's departure became the first person from Hainan to pass the provincial examination. In 1548 the hall became the “Dongpo Academy”, Danzhou's highest school.

“My life's work: Huangzhou, Huizhou, Danzhou”

The pardon came in June 1100, after three years on the island. Asked how he had fared on Hainan, he reportedly said the climate was excellent and the people not bad. In one poem he even called himself a man of Danzhou who just happened to be born in Sichuan.

Shortly before his death in 1101 he looked back on his life in a verse: if asked about his life's work, it was Huangzhou, Huizhou and Danzhou — of all things, the three places of his exile. Generations later people in Danzhou still said the scholars here were no less than those of the rich provinces on the mainland.

What you see in the academy

The complex now covers about 2.5 hectares and has been rebuilt several times. You enter through a gate, pass the Wine Pavilion to the old hall; behind it lie the main hall with a coloured group of figures — Su Dongpo teaching, with Li Ziyun and his son beside him — and a courtyard with a mango tree more than a hundred years old. There are also old stone tablets with inscriptions from many centuries and an old well.

Best known is the bronze figure with bamboo hat and clogs. It recalls an anecdote: caught in the rain on his way home, Su Dongpo borrowed a hat and wooden clogs from a farmer and stomped through the village like that. The women laughed, the dogs barked — and the scene became one of the most popular motifs of Chinese painting.

Old Zhonghe

The academy lies in Zhonghe, Danzhou's old administrative seat, today a quiet market town away from the new city. Some lanes are still paved with flagstones, and there are old temples and stone tablets everywhere.

One of them is the temple of Lady Xian, a 6th-century military leader still revered in southern China. It is considered the oldest temple of its kind on Hainan. If you have time, take a walk round the town after the academy.

How to approach the visit

One to one and a half hours is enough for the academy. Admission is low. A nice rule: anyone who can recite three poems by Su Dongpo in full at the ticket office gets in free — in Chinese, of course.

Without explanation many inscriptions remain mute. If you know the stories on this page or have a translation app with you, you'll see much more. It's easiest to get there by Didi, for example from Ocean Flower Island or Baimajing station.