The Exile of Li Bai

Li Bai was already famous long before he ever set foot in the imperial court.

His poems were recited across taverns and study halls, copied by hand, and passed from friend to friend. He was known not only for his brilliance, but for his manner: proud, spontaneous, and unrestrained. He wrote of mountains and rivers as if they were old companions, of wine as if it were a moral necessity, and of freedom as if it were the only life worth living.

Yet Li Bai wanted more than admiration. Like many scholars of his time, he believed that true talent should serve the state.

When he was finally summoned to the capital, Chang’an, he arrived not as a petitioner but as a celebrity. Courtiers had already heard of him. The emperor himself, Xuanzong, was said to admire his verse. For a brief time, Li Bai stood astonishingly close to power.

But closeness to power requires restraint, and restraint was never his strength.

Li Bai refused to behave like a court official. He drank openly, spoke carelessly, and showed little patience for hierarchy. He composed poems at banquets when others were expected to bow. He mocked formality and disdained intrigue, even as he moved among those who lived by it.

Court officials began to resent him. Some feared his influence; others simply found him intolerable. Stories circulated that he had offended powerful figures, that he embarrassed the court with his arrogance, that he failed to understand the unspoken rules that governed imperial life.

Eventually, his favour faded.

Li Bai left Chang’an not in disgrace, but in disappointment. He returned to a wandering life, travelling the rivers and mountains he loved, writing poems that grew more reflective, more distant, and at times more bitter. His brush remained fearless, but his ambitions had been bruised.

Then came rebellion.

In 755, the An Lushan Rebellion shattered the Tang empire. The court fled. Loyalties fractured. In the chaos, Li Bai was drawn — recklessly — into political entanglements. He attached himself to a prince who opposed the reigning authority, perhaps out of loyalty, perhaps out of naïveté, perhaps because he believed talent alone could remain untouched by politics.

He was wrong.

When the rebellion was suppressed, those associated with the losing side were punished. Li Bai was arrested and sentenced to exile, ordered to travel thousands of miles to the distant south — a punishment that, for many, was a slow death.

At the time, Li Bai was already in his late fifties.

The journey was long and humiliating. Removed from the centres of culture and poetry, he travelled through unfamiliar landscapes, uncertain whether he would ever return. Yet even then, he wrote. His poems from this period speak of rivers flowing endlessly east, of the moon seen from foreign shores, of a man still unbroken, though no longer defiant.

Fate intervened.

Before Li Bai reached his place of exile, a general amnesty was declared. His sentence was lifted. He was allowed to return - not to court, not to power, but to freedom.

He never served the empire again.

Li Bai spent his remaining years wandering, drinking, writing, and watching the world from a distance. He had tasted the court and found it narrow. He had touched power and learned its cost. What remained was poetry: and in that, he was unmatched.

In later generations, Li Bai would be remembered not as a failed official, but as the embodiment of poetic freedom itself: a man who approached power, recoiled from it, and survived with his voice intact.

Night Mooring at Ox Islet, Thinking of the Past

Night falls on the western river at Ox Islet,

the blue sky empty, without a single cloud.

I board my boat and gaze at the autumn moon,

thinking in vain of General Xie of old.

I too can chant lofty verses,

yet such a man can no longer hear me.

At dawn I will hoist my sail and depart—maple leaves falling, one after another.

夜泊牛渚怀古

牛渚西江夜，

青天无片云。

登舟望秋月，

空忆谢将军。

余亦能高咏，

斯人不可闻。

明发挂帆去，

枫叶落纷纷。

yè bó niúzhǔ huái gǔ

niúzhǔ xī jiāng yè,

qīng tiān wú piàn yún.

dēng zhōu wàng qiū yuè,

kōng yì Xiè Jiāngjūn.

yú yì néng gāo yǒng,

sī rén bù kě wén.

míng fā guà fān qù,

fēng yè luò fēn fēn.

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Discover more Li Bai

One of Li Bai’s most famous poems,静夜思 Quiet Night Thought, is featured in Chinese Stories for Language Learners: Elementary (Volume 2), with Chinese, pinyin, and English.

Learn more