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Li Bai  |
| CCTV.COM 2002-03-26 14:03:47 |
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 In the bright dawn clouds I left Baidicheng;
A thousand li to Jiangling only takes a day.
I hear the incessant cry of monkeys from the banks;
My light barge has passed countless folds of hills.
Beautiful lines like these are what one would recite whenever the name of the great Tang－dynasty poet Li Bai crops up. His poems always enchant with a spirit that could conquer mountains and rivers, and the wonderful carefree mood of unrestrained spontaneity they exude.
Li Bai lived in the 8th century when the great Tang Dynasty was at the height of its zenith. Like thunder and storm, like bells and chimes, Li Bai's poems rang out a resonant note of that era.
 Don't you see the Yellow River's waters
descend from Heaven,
Rushing seawards, never to return?
One day I'll skim the waves, blown by the wind,
With sails hoisted high, across the vast ocean.
Li Bai's legendary life was very colorful. He came from a merchant family in a city in central Asia on the ancient Silk Road, the westernmost town of the Tang Dynasty. When Li Bai was 5 his father took him back to Sichuan to live in present－day Jiangyou City, Sichuan Province. As Taoism flourished in these parts, Li Bai read much Taoist literature. Confucian education was added to his Western Regions upbringing. He read miscellaneous books by political strategists too. He described himself as: "I read at 5, and a hundred schools of literature at 10." "At 15, I scanned exotic books and wrote verses better than Xiangru."
Li Bai was a traveler, covering all parts of China. He wrote in his poems: "I go far to the Five Sacred Mountains to seek immortals. Touring famous mountains is my aspiration." His poems described mountains and waters of his motherland like Huangshan, Lushan, Taishan and Tianmu mountains, the Yellow, Changjiang rivers, and Dongting Lake etc. Under his pen, these places become more beautiful and majestic than ever.
What heights!
 It's easier to climb to Heaven
Than take the Sichuan Road.
Long ago, Can Cong and Yu Fu
founded the kingdom of Shu;
Forty－eight thousand years went by,
Yet no road linked it with the land of Qin.
Dong Naibin, research fellow of Chinese Literature Institute, Academy of Social Sciences
Li Bai enjoyed a great fame as a young man. As soon as he arrived at the capital Chang'an he showed his poems to a well－known poet He Zhizhang. Struck by the very first line in Li Bai's "The Sichuan Road", the elderly poet wondered if Li Bai had come from another world. He called him "poet immortal", a name that stuck to Li Bai all his life.
Yuan Xingpei, professor of Beijing University
Li Bai won not only the hearts of readers at his time; his name, a very resonant name, and his poems, have always inspired people for the past 1,200 years and more. He is the most read poet by contemporary readers.
Li Bai, the "poet immortal", won the hearts of his contemporary readers. Tang－dynasty poet Du Fu held him in great esteem. He wrote in his poems:
 Li Bai is unsurpassed in poetry.
He wanders around with a very bright mind.
His writing brush sweeps like a thunderstorm,
His lines touch the hearts of ghosts and spirits.
Emperor Ming Huang of Tang appointed the very famous Li Bai academician of the imperial academy. But politics went against his unrestrained character.
How can I bow and wait on powerful royalties?
That would make me very unhappy.
Again he wandered around amid picturesque mountains and rivers.
At Yellow Crane Tower in the west
My old friend says farewell;
In the mist and flowers of spring
He goes down to Yangzhou;
Lonely sail, distant shadow,
Vanish in blue emptiness;
All I see is the great river
Flowing into the far horizon.
Li Bai, a great Tang－dynasty poet, eulogized his majestic motherland and loved the people living on this piece of land. He wandered around the country, and recorded in his immortal poems his deep feelings for the beautiful life.
I'm on board； we're about to sail
When there's stamping and singing on shore;
Peach Blossom Pool is a thousand feet deep,
Yet not so deep, Wang Lun, as your love for me.
In his poems, man and nature are a harmonious whole, each having a deep affection for the other.
Only Mount Jingting and me,
Will never be tired of each other.
Dusk falls on the green mountains.
And the moon follows me home.
I raise my cup and invite the moon,
My shadow included, we are three.
In front of waterfalls in Mount Lushan, Li Bai wrote these famous lines:
Down it cascades 3,000 feet,
As if Silver River falling from Heaven!
He described the cold weather of the north with "Snowflakes on Yanshan Mountains are the size of mats." He depicted the rugged mountain roads in Sichuan as "harder than climbing to Heaven." His lines "Cut water with a sword, the water flows on； quench sorrow with wine, the sorrow increases" showed his grief of having "white hair 3,000 meters long".
Dong Naibin, research fellow of Chinese Literature Institute,
Academy of Social Sciences
His poems are natural and smooth, and beautiful and clean as a lotus flower rising out of water. The feelings in one's heart, which one finds hard to express or unable to express well, come out beautifully under his pen. One feels that not only his mind is expressed, but expressed hundreds of times better. So people choose to recite his poems when they want to express their feelings.
Li Bai is another great romantic poet after Qu Yuan in the Warring States period. His poems are valuable spiritual wealth of the Chinese people. His poems have been translated into many languages and read and loved by people abroad. Western musicians set his poems to symphonies and play them to a wide audience.
Interview: Hu Xiaowei
Contemporary readers in the modern times read his poems to broaden their vision. This kind of impact is uncommon with other poets. That is why his poems still strike a responsive chord in the readers' hearts after more than a thousand years.
Interview: Jin Yuanpu
Our life may be mundane and plain. When we have Li Bai's poems, our life suddenly sparkles with resplendent colors.
Beside my bed a pool of light,
Is it hoarfrost on the ground?
I lift my eyes and see the moon,
I bend my head and think of home.
People away from home often recite this poem by Li Bai. Han Yu, well－known literati of the Tang Dynasty, once said: "The writings of Li Bai and Du Fu never lose their charm, radiating rays of light a hundred thousand feet high." Li Bai and his poems have merged with the spirit of the Chinese nation.
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