UCLA

This thesis examines how the fraught Changqing reign (821–824) is remembered, reworked, and retold in later writings by Yuan Zhen 元稹 (779–831), Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–846), and their contemporaries, and how these narratives intersect with the poets’ increasingly divergent life paths. By situating these poems within the political and social contexts of the 820s, it traces how experiences at the Changqing court are reinterpreted in later recollections, producing multiple close yet not fully congruent Changqing narratives. These include the joint Changqing literary legend Yuan and Bai build in exchange poems and self-annotations, Bai’s later self-reflection that turns the reign into a lesson in retreat, Yuan’s Hanlin-centered political self-narration, and institutional or third-person retellings by contemporaries. Taken together, these retellings show that the work of shaping a shared story—what is stressed, omitted, or shifted elsewhere—brings into view deep differences in Yuan and Bai’s political attitudes and ideals, rooted in their early careers yet sharpened by the crises of the 820s. Ultimately, the thesis uses Changqing as a lens to think about how a close yet innately different relationship works: how Yuan and Bai keep trying to hold together affection and distinction, a shared past and divergent aspirations, as their lives move farther apart.