A Floating Life

History and legend combine in Simon Elegant's bawdy "autobiographical" account of China's famed rabble-rousing versemaker Li Po.
On a lavishly outfitted river barge in ancient China, a studious young vintner's son takes down the life story of the extraordinary Tang Dynasty poet-in-exile, none other than the "Banished Immortal" himself, the great Li Po. Each day, the young man sits with brush, ink, and scroll and meticulously records the outlandish adventures that Li Po (with flask of warm rice wine always in hand) recalls: his ride on the back of an enormous eagle; his work for a brutal butcher as a Pigboy-in-training; his role as advisor to Emperor Hsuan Tsung (in matters of cock-fighting and tree-climbing, not of state); and his recurring encounters with the glorious Peony, a high courtesan and the finest singer in the land.
Li Po rails against all that conspires to constrain him: the philosophy of "that pietistic old prater Confucius," the elaborate rules governing the composition of verse, the rigid examinations required to obtain an official post, and the greedy emperors whose expansionism leads China into a period of rebellion and catastrophe.

Simon Elegant is an editor and writer for the Far Eastern Economic Review.