The Life Journey of Jiang Jie, Who Listened to the Rain Through a Lifetime

Jiang Jie (c. 1245-c. 1305), of Yangxian (Yixing), passed the last Song examination in 1274 — and two years later the dynasty was gone, and he never served anyone again. The last of the great Song lyricists and one of its 'Final Four,' he compressed a whole ruined life into one lyric's three rain-showers: 'In youth, listening to rain in the singing tower... in middle age, on a passenger boat... and now, in a monk's hut, hair gone white — let the rain fall, drop on drop, on the steps till dawn.'

Timeline of the Journey

• c. 1245 · Yangxian — Born into the great Jiang clan of Yangxian near Lake Tai: silk, books, and a boyhood among the last orchards of the Song.
• 1274 · Lin'an — Jinshi at the Xianchun examination — the dynasty's second-to-last degree list. Within the year Xiangyang falls; within two, the capital.
• 1276 · The Fall — Lin'an surrenders; the boy-emperor is taken north. The new graduate burns his career: no office under the Yuan, ever — fifty years of refusal begun at thirty.
• c. 1279 · Wujiang — Drifting the lakes and canals of the south: 'A bamboo boat past Wujiang' — 'Spring has not waited: the cherries have reddened, the plantains greened' — time itself the conqueror's ally.
• c. 1290s · Zhushan — Hidden in the Bamboo Mountain by Lake Tai, the name 'Zhushan' taken; the Yuan summons refused again — the hermit lyricist of the lost dynasty, wine and memory for subject.
• c. 1305 · Yangxian — Dead near sixty, the life complete in one poem: the three rains of youth, middle age and the white-haired monk's hut — the Song's whole century in a single night's weather.

'Grief — how to make one word of it? Let it rain on the monk's hut steps till dawn.' The dynasty ended; Jiang Jie listened to it end, and made the rain itself the elegy — the last and loneliest of the Song lyricists.