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A Natural Intoxication:

A Natural Intoxication:

Prose in the Tang and Song Dynasties

During the Tang and Song dynasties, the shi, or scholarly elites, rose as significantly important figures within the cultural, social and political arenas of Chinese society. Writers in the period constructed brilliant works of poetry, prose and fiction, which could be distributed to many people due to innovations in printing. Prose writers, which include Tao Qian, Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi, developed themes of intoxication, simplicity and nature to identify with practices of Daoism.

In Tao Qian’s “Peach Blossom Spring,” a fisherman stumbles upon a natural setting, full of “falling petals” (Essays), mountains, streams and forests around him. Eventually, he reaches a clearing that displays cottages occupied by “contented and perfectly happy” (Essays) villagers. The villagers appeared strange and foreign to him, yet simple and kind enough to offer him food and beer. The act of drinking beer represents the fisherman’s intoxication with such a natural, simple lifestyle among the trees. Qian also writes, “Biography of Master Five Willows” to portray a man “who was always at peace” (Essays) and “had a wine-loving nature.” He was “never really caring whether he went or stayed … [and] … had no desire for glory or gain” (Essays). Like the fisherman, Master Five Willows accepted a simple life in a natural setting, which leads to his intoxication.

Similar themes appear in other works during the Tang and Song dynasties. In his essay “The Pavilion of an Intoxicated Old Man,” Ouyang Xiu writes about a pavilion where its prefect, the Old Man, “becomes intoxicated after only drinking a little” (Essays). Unlike Qian, Xiu explicitly states that the old man’s intoxication is due to his surroundings when he writes that it “has nothing to do with the wine, it has to do instead with being in the mountains by the water” (Essays). In his essay “At Red Cliffs, I,” Su Shi writes about people...