Su Dongpo's Midnight Walk: How China's Greatest Poet Made Peace With Sleepless Nights

It was past midnight. The court official, poet, and gastronome Su Shi — known to history as Su Dongpo — lay awake in his quarters in Huangzhou, a city of exile far from the capital where his political enemies had sent him to be forgotten.

He could not sleep.

This was not unusual. Su Dongpo's life during his years of exile was marked by the particular kind of sleeplessness that comes not from physical restlessness but from the weight of circumstance — the loss of position, the separation from friends, the uncertainty of a future that had once seemed so bright. The mind that had composed some of the most celebrated poetry in Chinese history now turned its formidable energy on itself, circling through regret and worry in the small hours of the night.

On this particular night, he did something that would produce one of the most beloved short essays in Chinese literature. He got up, walked to the Chengtian Temple nearby, found his friend Zhang Huaimin also awake and unable to sleep, and the two of them spent the night walking together in the moonlit courtyard, watching the shadows of bamboo move across the ground like patterns of water and seaweed.

He wrote about it afterward in a few spare, luminous sentences. And in those sentences, without intending to, he described one of the most effective approaches to insomnia that anyone has ever articulated.

I'm AFENG. And I think Su Dongpo understood something about sleepless nights that most sleep advice completely misses.

The Essay That Changed How I Think About Insomnia

The piece Su Dongpo wrote — Ji Chengtian Si Ye You, "Notes on a Night Walk at Chengtian Temple" — is barely a hundred characters in the original Chinese. It describes the moonlight, the walk, the bamboo shadows, the companionship of his friend. And then it ends with a question that has haunted readers for nearly a thousand years:

"Which night has no moonlight? Which place has no bamboo and pine? But there are few people as idle as the two of us."

On the surface, this is a gentle, melancholy observation about leisure and exile. But read it again. What Su Dongpo is really saying is this: the beauty was always there. The moonlight was always falling. The bamboo shadows were always moving. It was only because he could not sleep — only because he was forced out of his usual patterns, stripped of his usual distractions — that he was able to see it.

The sleepless night, in Su Dongpo's hands, became not a failure but a gift. Not a problem to be solved but an experience to be inhabited.

The Paradox at the Heart of Insomnia

Modern sleep medicine has a name for what Su Dongpo stumbled upon: paradoxical intention. It is one of the most consistently effective techniques in cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), and it works on a principle that seems, at first, completely counterintuitive.

The harder you try to fall asleep, the more awake you become. This is not a personal failing — it is a neurological fact. The effort of trying to sleep activates the arousal systems of the brain: the amygdala heightens its vigilance, cortisol levels rise, the prefrontal cortex engages in the very monitoring activity that makes sleep impossible. You cannot think your way into unconsciousness. The attempt to control sleep is precisely what prevents it.

Paradoxical intention works by removing the effort. Instead of trying to sleep, you give yourself permission to be awake — to observe the wakefulness with curiosity rather than resistance, to find what is actually present in the sleepless night rather than fighting to escape it. And in that release of effort, the arousal systems quiet, the vigilance drops, and sleep — no longer being chased — often arrives on its own.

Su Dongpo didn't know the term paradoxical intention. But when he got up, walked to the temple, and gave himself over to the moonlight and the bamboo shadows, he was practicing it with the instinctive grace of a great artist.

The Role of Friendship and Connection

There is another detail in Su Dongpo's essay that I find deeply moving and deeply instructive: he did not take his midnight walk alone. He went to find his friend. And his friend was also awake.

Modern research on sleep and social connection has produced findings that would not have surprised Su Dongpo. Loneliness is one of the most powerful predictors of poor sleep quality — more powerful than many of the physical factors we typically focus on. The nervous system, which evolved in a social species, uses the presence of trusted others as one of its primary signals of safety. When we feel connected, the threat-detection systems quiet. When we feel isolated, they remain on alert, even in the dark, even in a comfortable bed.

Su Dongpo's exile was, among other things, a form of enforced social isolation. His insomnia was, in part, his nervous system's entirely rational response to that isolation. And his cure — finding his friend, walking together, sharing the beauty of the night — was, among other things, a restoration of the social connection his nervous system needed to feel safe enough to rest.

Making Peace With the Sleepless Night

I want to be clear: I am not suggesting that insomnia is fine, or that the solution to poor sleep is simply to go for a walk and write poetry about it. Chronic sleep deprivation is a serious health issue that deserves serious attention.

But I am suggesting that the relationship most of us have with our sleepless nights — the frustration, the catastrophizing, the desperate effort to force sleep that only makes things worse — is itself a significant part of the problem. And that Su Dongpo's instinctive response — to stop fighting, to get up, to find beauty in the wakefulness, to return to bed when the body was ready — contains a wisdom that modern sleep science is only now beginning to formalize.

When sleep won't come, stop trying to make it. Get up. Do something quiet and genuinely pleasant — not screens, not work, but something that engages the senses gently: a slow walk, a cup of warm tea, a few pages of a book you love. Give the arousal systems something to release their grip on.

Find the moonlight in your own sleepless night. What is actually present in this moment, beyond the frustration of not sleeping? The quality of the darkness. The sound of the night. The particular stillness of a house at 2am. Su Dongpo found a masterpiece in his insomnia. You don't need to write an essay — but you might find that the night, approached with curiosity rather than resistance, has more to offer than you thought.

Return to bed when the body signals readiness. Not when you decide it's time. Not when the clock says you've been up long enough. When the body itself begins to soften and the eyes grow heavy — that is the signal. Trust it.

The Moonlight Was Always There

Su Dongpo spent years in exile, far from the life he had imagined for himself. He wrote some of his greatest work during those years. He discovered food, friendship, and the particular beauty of a moonlit courtyard at midnight. He did not sleep well. But he slept, eventually, and he woke, and he kept going — with a grace and a humor and a vitality that have made him one of the most beloved figures in Chinese cultural history.

At Taiji Sleep, we believe that the relationship with sleep — like all important relationships — requires both intention and acceptance. We design our products to support the intention: the right temperature, the right texture, the right environment for the body to find its way to rest. But we also hold Su Dongpo's wisdom close: that sometimes the most powerful thing you can do for your sleep is to stop trying so hard, look up, and notice the moonlight.

It was always there. It is there tonight. And so, eventually, is sleep.