《入都》(Entering the Capital): Ten Poems Written Before the Exam Journey by a Twenty-One-Year-Old

丈夫只手把吴钩，意气高于百尺楼。一万年来谁著史，三千里外欲封侯。

Author: Koutian Wu; GitHub: ktwu01

In the 23rd year of the Daoguang reign (1843), Li Hongzhang was 21 years old. That year he was selected as an Excellent Scholar (yougong), and at his father Li Wen’an’s command he traveled from his home in Anhui to the capital, preparing for the following year’s Shuntian provincial examination. On the road into the capital, he wrote the ten Rudu poems. Lately I keep returning to the first and second of them, because they feel a lot like where I am now.

The first poem: vitality and ambition

丈夫只手把吴钩，意气高于百尺楼。 一万年来谁著史，三千里外欲封侯。 定将捷足随途骥，那有闲情逐水鸥。 笑指泸沟桥畔月，几人从此到瀛洲？

A 21-year-old, walking three thousand li from Anhui to Beijing, is thinking “who in ten thousand years has written history.” The ambition of that line is absurd enough to be funny, yet it’s precisely that absurdity that befits a young man just setting out. He has no military merit yet, no official post, hasn’t even taken the provincial exam. All he has is “vitality,” and the line “I will follow the fastest horse, and have no leisure to chase the water gulls”: I’m going to ride with the fastest horse, with no time for the leisurely gulls floating on the water.

I’ve read that line many times. A person riding with a fast horse has no right to envy the gulls’ leisure. You can’t have it both ways between those two ways of living.

The second poem: exhaustion and self-doubt

频年伏枥困红尘，悔煞驹光二十春。 马足出群休恋栈，燕辞故垒更图新。 遍交海内知名士，去访京师有道人。 即此可求文字益，胡为抑郁老吾身！

The same person, the same journey into the capital, yet the tone of the second poem has completely changed. “For years held to the stall, stuck in the mortal dust, regretting the wasted twenty springs of my youth”: these years trapped in the world like a horse kept at a stall, twenty years of time passing, leave him with regret.

This is the real young person. Not just the first poem’s high spirits, but also the second poem’s self-doubt: have I wasted my first twenty years? Am I setting out too late now?

But immediately afterward, he gives himself an answer: “A horse that leaves the herd must not cling to its stall; a swallow that leaves its old nest seeks something new.” A horse running out of the herd can’t cling to the old stable; a swallow changing nests must first leave the old one. Then: “Make friends with all the famous men under heaven, go visit those of genuine wisdom in the capital.” Finally he delivers himself a sharp wake-up call: “This very road brings the gain of letters, so why grow old in depression?” This path itself can bring growth, so why sink into melancholy to old age?

Why this feels a lot like where I am now

Right now I’m simultaneously doing a PhD, building a startup, and switching fields. Put these together, and they look a lot like Li Hongzhang at 21: holding in my hand no battlefield victories that have already paid off, only “vitality” and an ambition in the mold of “who in ten thousand years has written history.” That line from the first poem, “I will follow the fastest horse, and have no leisure to chase the water gulls,” I know all too well. When you’re riding with a fast horse, you genuinely have no strength left to envy other people’s leisurely lives.

But the second poem is the part I need to remember more. “For years held to the stall, stuck in the mortal dust, regretting the wasted twenty springs of my youth,” I feel this emotion too. I wonder whether I’m moving too slowly, whether I should have started earlier, whether I’ve already wasted some years on places I shouldn’t have.

Li Hongzhang’s solution to himself isn’t to turn back and make up for the past, but “a horse that leaves the herd must not cling to its stall; a swallow that leaves its old nest seeks something new”: since I’m going to run out of the herd, don’t cling to the old stable; since I’m going to change nests, just go build a new one. Then go meet real people, go visit those of genuine wisdom, and treat this new path itself as a source of growth.

These ten poems were written when he was 21, before he had accomplished anything. What happened later is all in the history books; I don’t need to repeat it here. What I care about more is the moment when these ten poems were written: a person with no proof of anything, who had already decided on “vitality higher than a hundred-foot tower,” while at the same time already doubting himself with “regretting the wasted twenty springs of my youth.” Both emotions coexisting isn’t a contradiction.

Vitality and doubt belong together in someone who is setting out. The only difference is what happens after the departure: whether you turn back to cling to the old stable, or “refuse to cling to the stall” and keep running forward.