Li Ling was a Han general captured in 99 BCE by the the Central Asian people generally called the Xiongnu.⁶ Around the same time Li Ling's friend Su Wu, a Han scholar official and chief palace attendant, was given credentials (often depicted as a staff with a banner on it) by his "Lord", Han emperor Wudi, and sent out from Chang An as a Han emissary to the Xiongnu. His main responsibility was to return some Xiongnu emissaries to their home and bring back the Han ones then being held captive by the Xiongnu. However, while he was there some of the emissaries revolted, with the result that Su Wu was himself detained by the Xiongnu; he then spent almost 20 years in captivity.

In 99 BCE the Xiongnu brought Su Wu and Li Ling together, hoping to get both to work for them. Li Ling did cooperate after hearing that his family had been executed by Han Wudi. The Xiongnu then had Li Ling try to persuade Su Wu to work for them, but Su Wu steadfastly refused, trying at one time to commit suicide. Because of this steadfast refusal, the Xiongnu then subjected him to many hardships, including sending him off to a remote area with little sustenance, where he had to tend sheep.⁷

In 86 BCE the Xiongnu and Han made peace, and the new Han emperor asked for Su Wu's return. The Xiongnu said he had died, but the emissary said the Emperor knew Su Wu was still alive because he had recently shot down a goose and found attached to its leg a message written by Su Wu. This may have been a trick by the emissary to get the Xiongnu to admit Su Wu was still alive, but later re-tellings have Su Wu actually fastening the message to the foot of a goose.

Finally in 81 Su Wu was able to return home to Chang'an. Here he worked on and off in the palace until his death in 60 BCE. Li Ling never did return. Their parting is the subject of several famous paintings.⁸

Su Wu's steadfast loyalty to Han is recounted in numerous songs, poems⁹ and plays.¹⁰ In painting he is most popularly depicted as a lonely shepherd tending his sheep, epitomizing his refusal to work for the enemy.¹¹

Like Li Ling, Su Wu is said to have written poetry.¹² Scholars are generally dubious of the attributions.

 
Original Preface¹³

Su Wu spent 19 years with the Xiongnu, a long period of great severity. Cold frost and hot sun, a desert court with ice and snow: how could he not have unfulfilled dreams of flying (home)? The thoughts behind the melody are quite mixed, singing once, then sighing three times.

 
Music (10 sections)¹⁴

        1. Receiving credentials in the Vermilion Hall
        2. In the remote desert stopping the chariot
        3. A grand nature reaches for the sky
        4. His loyalty continues day after day
        5. Chewing on a rug (to stay alive while in captivity at) Lake Baikal
        6. Stretching out the neck to look south (towards home)
        7. The banner has fallen from the credentials (a staff¹⁵; this section includes a passage called "the sound of geese")
        8. The hair is all turning white
        9. To die separated from Li Ling
      10. While still alive, entering the Jade Gate (imperial palace)
              harmonics
                end (playing time: just under 6 minutes)

 
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. III/230; 18531.xxx; 6/53 Han Jie 漢節 first discusses 符節 "tally used as credentials" by the emperor. It gives a number of quotes about Han credentials, but has no mention of Su Wu. The first example, from the Shi Ji #106, the biography of 吳王濞 Liu Pi, King of Wu, says, "I would not venture to ask for the post of general, but if Your Majesty would give me one of the credentials used by the Han envoys, I promise to bring you a fitting reward." (GSR I, p. 416; 中文/2823). These credentials were a physical object, and in the case of Su Wu they are often considered to have been a staff.
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2. Lower the first string, raise the fifth. The only pieces included with this mode are this one and #138 Zhaojun Yuan (Lament of Zhao Jun); all other pieces using this tuning are grouped in the Wuyi mode.
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3. Extracted from the online version of a famous painting called Parting of Su Wu and Li Ling (National Palace Museum, Taiwan). A net search for "Li Ling" "Su Wu" yields other online examples, such as Su Wu and Li Ling, with Attendants (Farewell of Su Wu and Li Ling) (Berkeley Art Museum). See also Michael Sullivan, The Three Perfections; NY, George Braziller, 1999, p.42ff.
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4. 蘇武思君 Su Wu Si Jun (Su Wu Thinks of his Lord)
蘇武思君 Su Wu Si Jun (33250.xxx) might also be translated as Su Wu Thinks of a Gentleman, referring to Li Ling, who shared Su Wu's captivity but eventually worked for the enemy. The earliest source of the Li Ling story is Shi Ji 110 (Watson II, p.160). Interestingly, although Su Wu Si Jun is here given as an alternate for Han Jie Cao and connected to the Su Wu story (33250.107 蘇武 /.108 節 Su Wu Jie tell the story of Su Wu's sojourn and include a picture of him as a shepherd, but do not mention a melody), Su Wu Si Jun is later almost always applied to a melody using the lowered third string tuning and melodically related to Li Ling Si Han (see next footnote).
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5. Zha Guide 22/194/380 Han Jie Cao has seven entries, but the latter six refer to an unrelated melody always called Su Wu Si Jun:

1. Han Jie Cao,  1549 (lowered 1st/raised 5th string tuning; alternate title Su Wu Si Jun)
2. Su Wu Si Jun, 1585 (lowered 3rd string tuning; lyrics; IV.417)
3. Su Wu Si Jun, 1589 (lowered 3rd string tuning; lyrics [Zha Fuxi made a partial recording]; VII/123)
4. Su Wu Si Jun, 1634 (standard tuning, shang mode; it seems unrelated to all the others; IX/312,)
5. Su Wu Si Jun, 1670 (lowered 3rd string tuning; XI/442)
6. Su Wu Si Jun, >1802 (lowered 3rd string tuning)
7. Su Wu Si Jun, 1876 ("= 1670").

The melody and lyrics in 1585 and 1589 seem in particular to be related to those of the Li Ling Si Han in 1539 (see note under the 1549 version [no lyrics]).
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6. Su Wu
蘇武字子卿 33250.107. Su Wu, style name Ziqing. He is also sometimes connected to the melody Yan Guo Hengyang. For information beyond what is there and above, see his biographies in Wikipedia and in Loewe, A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han and Xin Periods.
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7. 匈奴 Xiongnu
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8. Apparently his life was not totally bleak: Lowe, op.cit., p. 495, says that he had a wife and fathered a son while in captivity. The son, 蘇通國 Su Tongguo, was able to go to Chang'an.
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9. For example, QSDQ, Folio 20B has such a poem by Yun Ruo.
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10. 33250.109 蘇武廟 Su Wu Miao: 二簧劇之一種，李陵碑之別名。 (Another name for Li Ling Bei: "Tragedy at the Li Ling Monument", set during the Yuan dynasty. See Tom Gee. Stories from Chinese Opera, p.211.)
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11. See Michael Sullivan, The Three Perfections, pp.42-44 for a discussion of the meaning of Zhao Mengfu's "Sheep and Goat" (Freer); Zhao was forced to work for the Mongols.
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12. YFSJ, Folios 16 and 17 has three poems (中文, pp. 233, 234, 350; all are [5+5] x 4). Folio 29 of Wen Xuan has four (中文, pp. 1298-1303 all are [5+5] x 8, 9 or 10). Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature, p. 251, translates Wen Xuan's third then second. He translates the third in the voice of a woman saying farewell to a husband leaving for battle, but Xu Yuanzhong (trans.), Song of the Immortals, pp.21/303, translates the same poem in the voice of the husband. For Li Ling see Li Ling Si Han. Also see Burton Watson, Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China, pp.24-33.
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13. The original preface is:

14. The original titles are:

15. Su Wu's biography in Han Shu 54.2463 says, "Grasping the Han staff (Han Jie) Su Wu tended sheep, holding onto the staff whether awake or asleep, so that the staff's banner became consumed and undone." The title of this section suggests that it was at this low point, with his banner in tatters, that Su Wu tied his message to the leg of a goose flying south, hoping the message would make it way back to Chang An. This section includes an evocative passage described as 雁聲 "the sound of geese", perhaps suggesting that it was when his banner was in tatters that Su Wu as a last resort tried to send a message attached to the foot of a goose.
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