'Guangling San ends with me': Xi Kang's last piece
In 263 CE Xi Kang was executed in the eastern market of Luoyang. Before he died he asked for a qin, played Guangling San, and said that from that day the piece would be lost. This article covers how the Book of Jin and the Shishuo Xinyu record the scene, why Xi Kang had to die, what story the piece tells, and why it was never really lost.
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Translated from the Chinese original.
Luoyang, the eastern market. A day in the year 263 CE.
The eastern market was where executions took place, and that day the crowd was unusually large. Three thousand students of the Imperial Academy had come. They had petitioned the court to pardon this man so that he could be their teacher, and the court had refused.
The man in the prisoner's cart was forty, and by the old measure seven chi eight cun tall. The Shishuo Xinyu says he had "the bearing of a dragon and the grace of a phoenix", a natural beauty; he was thought the handsomest man of his age. At the execution ground his expression did not change. He looked up at the shadow cast by the sun.
Then he said: bring me a qin.
The eastern market
The Shishuo Xinyu ("A New Account of Tales of the World", a 5th-century collection of anecdotes about famous people) tells this scene most briefly and best, in its chapter "Magnanimity":
When Xi Zhongsan faced execution in the eastern market, his spirit and bearing did not change. He asked for a qin, played it, and performed Guangling San. When the piece ended he said: "Yuan Xiaoni once asked to learn this piece, and I held on to it and would not give it to him. From today Guangling San is lost." Three thousand students of the Imperial Academy submitted a petition asking to have him as their teacher, and it was refused. Prince Wen soon regretted it as well.
"Prince Wen" is Sima Zhao, the regent who held real power in Wei and ordered the execution.
The Jin Shu (the "Book of Jin", the dynasty's official history) adds one detail: "Kang looked round at the shadow of the sun, asked for a qin and played it." He made sure there was time for a whole piece before calling for the instrument.
That detail makes the scene concrete. He was not raging or performing; he was calculating. He knew how long a large piece took, and one glance at the shadow told him how long remained. Only when the two matched did he speak. When he finished, the shadow had reached its mark.
Why he had to die
Xi Kang (223–263), courtesy name Shuye, came from Zhi in present-day Anhui. He married into the ruling Cao family of the Wei dynasty and held the rank of Zhongsan Dafu, hence "Xi Zhongsan". He was the central figure of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, a circle of free-spirited intellectuals who drank, talked philosophy and forged iron at Shanyang with Ruan Ji, Shan Tao, Xiang Xiu, Liu Ling, Ruan Xian and Wang Rong. The forging is true: Xi Kang kept a blacksmith's hearth under a great willow in his courtyard, Xiang Xiu worked the bellows, and he did not stop hammering even for distinguished guests.
One such guest was Zhong Hui.
Zhong Hui was a trusted follower of Sima Zhao. As a young man he had wanted Xi Kang's opinion of an essay, but was so afraid of criticism that he threw it over the courtyard wall and ran. Later he paid a formal call with a large retinue. Xi Kang went on hammering without looking up. Zhong Hui stood a long time and finally turned to leave. Only then did Xi Kang speak: "What did you hear that made you come? What did you see that makes you go?" Zhong Hui answered: "I came because of what I heard, and I go because of what I have seen."
It is the period's most famous exchange, and it made an enemy.
The immediate cause of his death was a friend's lawsuit. His close friend Lü An was falsely accused of unfilial conduct by his elder brother Lü Xun; Xi Kang testified for him and was arrested with him. The real cause lay deeper. The Sima family was preparing to replace the Wei dynasty and needed the educated class to declare loyalty. Xi Kang would not. Worse, when Shan Tao recommended him for office, he answered with a public "Letter Breaking Off Relations with Shan Juyuan", saying he "rejected Tang and Wu and thought little of the Duke of Zhou and Confucius", the sages invoked to justify a change of dynasty, and listing seven things he "could not bear" about office and two that made it "impossible". In effect it told Sima Zhao: I will not take your side.
So Zhong Hui advised Sima Zhao that Xi Kang was a "sleeping dragon" who must not be allowed to rise, and that unless he was removed there would be no purifying the customs of the age. Sima Zhao listened.
Xi Kang did not die because of Lü An. He died because he was Xi Kang.
What Guangling San is
That it could be "lost" shows it was already a famous large piece, and hard to obtain. What is it about?
The Qin Cao ("Qin Melodies"), a collection of stories behind qin pieces attributed to the Eastern Han scholar Cai Yong, says Guangling San was also called "Nie Zheng Assassinates the King of Han". Nie Zheng's father, forging a sword for the King of Han, missed his deadline and was executed. Nie Zheng swore revenge and studied the qin in the mountains for ten years. Then, his appearance changed, he returned to Han and played in the street until people and horses stopped to listen and the king summoned him to the palace. He hid a dagger in the body of the qin, drew it halfway through the piece and killed the king. Then he cut away his own face and took his life, so that no one could identify him and his family would be spared.
This differs from the Shiji (the "Records of the Grand Historian", around 100 BCE), where Nie Zheng kills Xia Lei, chancellor of Han, at the request of Yan Zhongzi, with no qin involved. The Qin Cao changes the target, makes the motive a father's revenge and adds the ten years of study, evidently to fit the music. Which is "true" matters less than this: qin players have always understood the piece as a story of vengeance and defiance.
The Guangling San preserved in the Shenqi Mipu (神奇秘谱, "Handbook of Spiritual and Marvelous Mysteries", 1425), compiled by the Ming prince Zhu Quan, has forty-five sections whose titles read like the scene list of a drama: "Taking Han", "Calling to the Dark", "Losing the Body", "Holding the Resolve", "The Oath Fulfilled", "Leaving Home", "Rising Fury", "Traveling in Disguise", "Hair Bristling", "Lifting the Cap", "Long Rainbow", "Cold Wind", "Throwing the Sword" and more. Nothing else in the repertoire is like it. Other pieces depict landscapes and states of mind; Guangling San narrates an assassination, from the vow to the deed to the death.
Whether Xi Kang meant something by playing it on the execution ground is a question people have been answering on his behalf for seventeen hundred years.
Yuan Xiaoni
Xi Kang's last words name one person. Yuan Zhun, courtesy name Xiaoni, from Chen commandery, was a learned contemporary, author of a work on government called the Yuanzi Zhengshu. He had asked to learn Guangling San, and Xi Kang "held on to it and would not give it". The wording is strong: not a polite excuse but a deliberate refusal.
Why? One guess is that the piece came to him mysteriously: the Taiping Guangji, a Song-dynasty compendium of tales, quotes an older ghost-story collection in which a spirit appears while Xi Kang plays one night at the Huayang pavilion, teaches him Guangling San, and makes him swear never to pass it on. That is a supernatural tale. A simpler answer is that a fine player does not hand over his best piece lightly, least of all to someone he thinks is not ready.
Either way, when Xi Kang died he was, as far as he knew, the only person who could play it. "From today Guangling San is lost" was a statement of fact. There is a touch of regret in it too: had he taught Yuan Xiaoni, the piece would survive, and at the last moment he admitted it.
Three thousand students
The Shishuo Xinyu has one more sentence: "Three thousand students of the Imperial Academy submitted a petition asking to have him as their teacher, and it was refused."
Three thousand was close to the Academy's whole student body. The episode shows Xi Kang's influence over young scholars, and why Sima Zhao could not let him live: a man for whom three thousand students would plead was the most dangerous kind.
The Jin history says Sima Zhao "soon regretted it", probably not for killing the wrong man but for killing him too conspicuously. After Xi Kang's death the Seven Sages scattered. Ruan Ji went on drinking (see Ruan Ji and Jiu Kuang); Shan Tao and Wang Rong rose to high office; Xiang Xiu was summoned to court, and on the way passed Xi Kang's old home at Shanyang, heard a neighbor's flute, and wrote the "Rhapsody on Remembering Old Times". It ends almost as soon as it begins; later readers said he did not dare write more.
Xi Kang ended with a piece of music, and Xiang Xiu mourned him with a rhapsody he could not finish. That was how people of the Wei and Jin expressed themselves.
It was not lost
Xi Kang said "from today it is lost", but the piece did not actually disappear.
It still circulated in the Sui (581–618) and Tang (618–907), when players knew it also as Zhixi, and became rare after the Song. In the early Ming, Zhu Quan put it in the Shenqi Mipu, noting that his copy descended by a roundabout route from "a score kept in the Sui palace": eight hundred years from the Sui court to a Ming prince. The Guangling San played today rests on this text, reconstructed through dapu (打谱, reconstructing a piece from a historical score) by Guan Pinghu and others in the twentieth century.
So between the piece we hear and the one Xi Kang played lie more than eleven hundred years, several losses and recoveries, and countless copyists. No one can guarantee it is the same music. But the story it carries is the same.
Why Xi Kang's death matters
In his "Rhapsody on the Qin" Xi Kang wrote:
Among all the instruments, the virtue of the qin is the highest.
He also said it could "guide and nourish the spirit, and harmonize the feelings". No one of his age praised the qin more highly.
A man who held the qin so high spent his last act playing it, not defending himself, pleading or cursing. He looked at the sun's shadow, asked for a qin, played to the end, said one sentence, and died.
After Xi Kang the qin carried an extra meaning. It was no longer only a tool of self-cultivation or a scholar's pastime. At certain moments it could be a person's final stance. You may kill me, but before you do, I will finish playing this piece.
To read the jianzipu (减字谱, the qin tablature) and see the forty-five sections, look up Guangling San in the guide to classic repertoire (in Chinese). It sits at the highest level there, and not only because it is difficult.