The Qiangtang River Tidal Bore. Photo by Xiao Yisan

For generations and generations, Chinese poets have been fascinated by the spectacular tidal bores of the Qiantang River at the head of Hangzhou Bay. Naturally, many poems on tide watching have been written. Among the poets of yore, who penned the most poems on this subject? Su Shi (1037-1101), aka Su Dongpo, preeminent scholar of the Song dynasty (960-1279) and one of China’s greatest poets, is definitely one of the best candidates.

In fact, Su once composed five poems in one go, titled “Watching the Tidal Bore on the Fifteenth Day of the Eighth Lunar Month, Five Quatrains”:

One

Knowing the “Jade Rabbit” is round tonight, I’m already feeling the colder autumn brought by frosty winds.

Praying to heaven not to lock its gate, I’ll savor the tides rushing under the moonlight.  

Two

As if thousands beating the drum the tide's roar,

scaring the Wu people like Wang Jun the Jin general of yore.

How high can the crest of the waves soar?

Even the Yue mountains are buried beneath all.

Three

Like the river my life ebbs and flows,

Long have I aged, as white as the waves my hair grows.

Even the Creator knows we easily get old,

So He turned back the river, telling it to flow to the west.

Four

Living by the riverside, the Wu people are so fond of surging billows,

That they unduly risk their lives riding waves.

If the God of Sea can see through the emperor’s mind,

He should turn the saline soil into fertile land.

Five

The water fairy and the river spirit are but two small fries,

Only the God of Sea brings from the east rainbow-swallowing bores.

Where can I find King Fuchai’s rhino-skinned warriors?

Three thousand crossbowmen will shoot down the waves.

Watching the Tidal Bore on a Moonlit Night. Painting by Li Song (Southern Song)

“During the sixth year of the reign of Xining, I served as the assistant prefect of Hangzhou. Watching the tidal bore on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, I composed five poems at the Anji Pavilion,” Su Shi wrote in an essay. It shows that these quatrains were done on the Mid-Autumn Day in the year 1073. Here, each of the five quatrains has a different theme. The first: raring to watch the tidal bore. The second: enjoying the spectacular view. The third: feelings after watching the tidal bore. The fourth: thoughts and reflections on the precarious life of the local watermen and the benefits that public water conservancy facilities failed to bring. The fifth: imagining himself obtaining rhino-skin-armored warriors of Fuchai (?-473 BC), king of Wu, and the three-thousand-strong crossbowmen that Qian Liu (852-932 AD), king of Wuyue, deployed to tame the tide.

True to the sentiments he expressed in the poem, Su Dongpo did more than enjoying the river tides; he spent a lot of efforts managing tides. In 1089, the fourth year of the reign of Yuanyou, Su was appointed prefect of Hangzhou. After some investigative work, he found that people from a number of prefectures in Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces had to cross the Qiantang River at a pass near Fushan Mountain for personal visits and commercial exchanges, but many a boat had been overturned by the tides. “The old and the infirm called out loud for help amid the rapids, but they were overtaken by the tides even before their voices died out”, “no more than one or two out of a hundred could emerge unscathed”, and damages worth tens of millions were caused to public and personal properties. Indeed, daily necessities like salt, rice, and firewood were also transported via the Qiantang River, and the safety of transport ships was greatly endangered near Fushan Mountain. In 1091, after learning that the dangers along the Fushan Mountain stretch could be avoided by digging a canal along the upper reaches of the river, Su not only went on a field trip but drew up a working plan and budget for the project, before submitting a memorial to the imperial court, pleading for 150,000 taels of silver as project funding and 3,000 soldiers as labor. The canal was planned to be finished in two years. However, Su was transferred to Yingzhou (present-day Fuyang city in Anhui province) in June before the project could be completed.

Apart from the five quatrains, Su wrote a number of other poems on watching the tidal bore as well. In “To the Tune of Auspicious Partridge: Watching the Tidal Bore”, a Ci poem, he wrote of the local people’s tradition of singing a song to celebrate Qiantang River’s receding tide. He began the poem “Watching the Zhejiang Waves” by stating “the tidal bores on the eighteenth day of the eighth lunar month, are the most spectacular of all”, which is often regarded as the highest compliment to the Qiantang River tidal bore.

The tidal bore left such an indelible mark on Su, that many years after he left Hangzhou, he composed yet another poem simply titled “Watching the Tidal Bore” in the year 1101. This time, he asked his reader, his youngest son, to see through the trappings of the mortal world, for “at the end of the day…the breathtaking Zhejiang tidal bore is no more than the breathtaking Zhejiang tidal bore”.

Later in the same year, on the twenty-eighth day of the seventh lunar month (August 24th), Su Dongpo died of illness in Changzhou city, Jiangsu province.