Li Bai is best known for the extravagant imagination and striking Taoist imagery in his poetry, as well as for his great love for liquor. Like Du Fu, he spent much of his life travelling, although in his case it was because his wealth allowed him to, rather than because his poverty forced him. He is said to have drowned in the Yangtze River, having fallen from his boat while drunkenly trying to embrace the reflection of the moon.

Li Bai, according to various historians was Turkic, from the Xiongnu tribes in the altaic region ^{[3] [4]}

[edit] Biography

Li Bai’s birthplace is uncertain, but one candidate is Suyab in Central Asia (near modern-day Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan).^[5] However his family had originally dwelled in what is now southeastern Gansu ^[6], and later moved to Jiangyou, near modern Chengdu in Sichuan province, when he was five years old. At the age of ten, his formal education started. Among various schools of classical Chinese philosophies, Taoism was the deepest influence, as demonstrated by his compositions. In 720, he was interviewed by Governor Su Ting, who considered him a genius. Though he expressed the wish to become an official, he could not be bothered to sit for the Chinese civil service examination. Perhaps he considered taking the examination below his dignity. Instead, beginning at age twenty-five, he travelled around China, enjoying liquor and leading a carefree life: very much contrary to the prevailing ideas of a proper Confucian gentleman. His personality fascinated the aristocrats and common people alike, and he was introduced to the Emperor Xuanzong around 742.

In 725, when he was twenty-five years old, Li Bai sailed down the Yangtze River all the way to Weiyang (Yangzhou) and Jinling (Nanjing). During the first year of his trip, he met celebrities and gave away much of his wealth to needy friends. He then turned back to central southern China, met Xu Yushi, the retired prime minister, married his daughter, and settled down in Anlu, Hubei.

In 730, Li Bai stayed in the Zhongnan Mountain near the capital Chang’an (Xi’an), and tried but failed to secure a position. He sailed down the Yellow River, stopped by Luoyang, and visited Taiyuan before going home.

In 740, he moved to Shangdong. In 742, he traveled to Zhejiang and befriended a Taoist priest. The same year, he traveled with his friend to the capital. Poet He Zhizhang called Li Bai “the god dismissed from the Heaven” after their initial meeting, and thus the epithet of “the Poem-God”. Consequently, he was interviewed by the emperor (Li Longji, but commonly known by his posthumous title Xuanzong), who personally prepared soup for him, and gave him a post at the Hanlin Academy, which served to provide scholarly expertise and poetry for the Emperor. When the emperor ordered Li Bai to the palace, he was drunk, but he improvised on the spot and produced fascinating love poems alluding to the romance between the emperor and Yang Guifei, the favorite concubine. Once, Li Bai was drunk and asked Gao Lishi, the most powerful eunuch in the palace, to take off his boots in front of the emperor. Gao was offended and managed to persuade Yang Guifei to stop the emperor from naming Li Bai for a prominent position. Li Bai gave up hope thereafter and resigned from the academy.

Thereafter he wandered throughout China for the rest of his life. He met Du Fu in the autumn of 744, and again the following year. These were the only occasions on which they met, but the friendship remained particularly important for the starstruck Du Fu (a dozen of his poems to or about Li Bai survive, compared to only one by Li Bai to Du Fu). At the time of the An Lushan Rebellion he became involved in a subsidiary revolt against the Emperor, although the extent to which this was voluntary is unclear. The failure of the rebellion resulted in his exile to Yelang. He was pardoned before the exile journey was complete.

Finally, Daizong named Li Bai the Registrar of the Left Commandant’s office in 762. When the imperial edict arrived in Dangtu, Anhui, Li Bai was already dead. According to legend, he was drowned attempting to embrace the moon’s reflection in a river. In reality, Li Bai committed suicide as evidenced by his farewell poem.

Simon Elegant novelized Li Bai’s life in his 1997 work, A Floating Life.^[7]

[edit] Poetry

Over a thousand poems are attributed to him, but the authenticity of many of these is uncertain. He is best known for his yue fu poems, which are intense and often fantastic. He is often associated with Taoism: there is a strong element of this in his works, both in the sentiments they express and in their spontaneous tone. Nevertheless, his gufeng (“ancient airs”) might adopt the perspective of the Confucian moralist.

Much like the genius of Mozart there exist many legends on how effortlessly Li Bai composed his poetry; he was said to be able to compose at an astounding speed, without correction. His favorite form is the jueju (five- or seven-character quatrain), of which he composed some 160 pieces. Li Bai’s use of language impresses through his extravagance of imagination and a direct communication of his free-spirited persona with the reader. Li Bai’s interactions with nature, friendship, his love of wine and his acute observations of life inform his best poems. Some, like Changgan xing (translated by Ezra Pound as The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter,^[2] record the hardships or emotions of common people. He also wrote a number of very oblique, allusive poems on women.

In his poems, Li Bai tried to avoid the use of obscure words and historical references. Unlike other ancient Chinese poets such as Du Fu, Li Bai had no need to prove himself to the public; instead, he could afford to concentrate on communicating his genuine feelings to the readers. His ability to create extraordinary out of ordinary was an unusual gift among his contemporaries, and was most likely the reason why he was considered the “Poem-God”^{[citation needed]}. The spontaneity of his language combined with the extravagance of his imagination distinguished Li Bai from any other poets in the Chinese history.

As one of the many followers of Lao Zi and a practitioner of Taoism in Tang Dynasty (Xuanzong included) and, above all, a free-spirited person, Li Bai paid no respect to Confucius and his ideology. Consequently, he has often been attacked by the Neo-Confucian “moralists,” ever since the Song Dynasty. Among the common people in China, however, Li Bai is unquestionably the most beloved figure in Chinese poetry.

One of Li Bai’s most famous poems is Drinking Alone by Moonlight (月下獨酌, pinyin: Yuè Xià Dú Zhuó), which is a good example of some of the most famous aspects of his poetry — a very spontaneous poem, full of natural imagery and anthropomorphism. Li Bai actually wrote several poems with the same title; Arthur Waley’s version of the most famous reads:^[8]

花間一壺酒。 A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;

獨酌無相親。 I drink alone, for no friend is near.

舉杯邀明月。 Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,

對影成三人。 For her, with my shadow, will make three men.

月既不解飲。 The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;

影徒隨我身。 Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.

暫伴月將影。 Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave

行樂須及春。 I must make merry before the Spring is spent.

我歌月徘徊。 To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;

我舞影零亂。 In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.

醒時同交歡。 While we were sober, three shared the fun;

醉後各分散。 Now we are drunk, each goes his way.

永結無情遊。 May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,

相期邈雲漢。 And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.

[edit] Influence

Li Bai is influential in the West partly due to Ezra Pound‘s versions of some of his poems in the collection Cathay,^[2] such as The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter. Although not completely accurate as translations, the ideas underlying them had a profound impact in shaping American Imagist and Modernist poetry through the 20th Century. Also, Gustav Mahler integrated four of Li Bai’s works in his symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde. These were in a free German translation by Hans Bethge, published in an anthology called Die chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute), ^[9] Bethge based his version on the pioneering translation into French by Saint-Denys.^[1] There is another striking musical setting of Li Po’s verse by the American composer Harry Partch, whose Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po for intoning voice and Adapted Viola (an instrument of Partch’s own invention) are based on the texts in The Works of Li Po, the Chinese Poet translated by Shigeyoshi Obata.^[10]

A crater on the planet Mercury has been named after him.

In both versions of Epcot‘s Circle-Vision 360° film in the China pavilion, Li Bai serves as the narrator and guide of the film.

[edit] See also

• Modernist poetry in English

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Cooper, Arthur (1973). Li Po and Tu Fu: Poems Selected and Translated with an Introduction and Notes (Penguin Classics, 1973). ISBN 978-0140442724 .
• Hinton, David (1998). The Selected Poems of Li Po (Anvil Press Poetry, 1998). ISBN 978-0856462917 .
• Waley, Arthur (1950). The poetry and career of Li Po (MacMillan Co., New York, 1950). ASIN B0006ASTS4.
• Weinberger, Eliot. The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry. (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2004). ISBN 0-8112-1605-5. Introduction, with translations by William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, and David Hinton.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Li Bai

Online translations (some with original Chinese, pronunciation, and literal translation):

• www.chinese-poems.com 20 Li Bai poems, in Chinese using simplified and traditional characters and pinyin, with literal and literary English translations by Mark Alexander.
• etext.lib.virginia.edu 34 Li Bai poems, in Chinese with English translation by Witter Bynner, from the Three Hundred Tang Poems anthology.
• www.cscs.umich.edu
• afpc.asso.fr
• Complete text of Cathay, the Ezra Pound/Ernest Fenollosa translations of poems principally by Li Po (J., Rihaku) together with public domain recordings (MP3) of the same.
• “Li Bai drinking alone (with the moon, his shadow, & 32 translators)” is a comprehensive collection of translations of this poem by an anonymous blogger. Retrieved April 15, 2007.
• 27 Recordings of “Drinking Alone by Moonlight,” from the LibriVox website. Retrieved July 1, 2007.
• Spanish Translations of the Poetry of Li Bai (Li Po) by Raúl Racedo, Argentina.
• Das Lied von der Erde: The Literary Changes – synopsis of original Chinese poems, Bethge’s translations and Mahler’s changes
• New English translations of Li Po with traditional characters in Zone Magazine.

By CHARLES HUTZLER – 3 hours ago

BEIJING (AP) — China’s Health Ministry ordered heightened efforts to stem the spread of infectious diseases Saturday following an outbreak of a virus that has caused the deaths of 22 children in one city and is spreading.

The outbreak of enterovirus 71, a type of hand, foot and mouth disease that children are susceptible to, is another headache for the communist government as it prepares for the Beijing Olympics already tarnished by an uprising among Tibetans and an international torch relay disrupted by protests.

Stepped up vigilance by health bureaus and hospitals to prevent the spread of infectious diseases was necessary “to guarantee the smooth staging of the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics and to … preserve social stability,” said the order posted on the ministry’s Web site.

Prompting the government to act was an unusual jump in cases of the enterovirus, known as EV-71, in Fuyang, a fast-growing city set in the rural heartland of central China.

As of early Saturday, 3,736 cases of EV-71 were reported in Fuyang’s mainly rural outskirts, a rise of 415 in about 24 hours, health officials said. Besides the 22 deaths, 1,115 people remain hospitalized, 42 of them in serious or critical condition, said the health department of Anhui Province, where Fuyang is located.

State-run television footage showed workers spraying disinfectant around houses in rural areas outside Fuyang and medical teams visiting families with small children.

Meanwhile, nearly 800 other cases were reported in other parts of Anhui, the health department said on its Web site. In Guangdong province, 1,000 miles to the south, preliminary tests showed an 18-month-old boy who died Friday was infected with EV-71, and a second suspected death is under investigation, the Xinhua News Agency said.

Cases of hand, foot and mouth outbreaks, but not necessarily EV-71, have been reported in at least two other provinces, Xinhua said.

The Health Ministry said it expected infections to climb, and peak in June and July. While the order singled out hand, foot and mouth disease for particular concern, it also mentioned hepatitis A, measles and other infectious diseases.

Hand, foot and mouth disease causes fever, mouth sores and rashes with blisters. Spread by contact with the stool or discharge from the sneezing or coughing of infected people, the viruses mainly strike children 10 years and younger. Some cases can lead to fatal brain swelling. The illness is not related to the foot and mouth disease that hits livestock.

There is no vaccine or specific therapy to treat the disease. Health experts recommend improved hygiene, with more frequent hand-washing and disinfecting areas.

The large number of cases spreading across a large area brings up parallels with the communist government’s handling of previous infectious outbreaks, especially that of SARS pneumonia in 2003. Government attempts to conceal the emergence of SARS, a new disease at the time, contributed to its spread beyond Guangdong in 2003, ultimately causing 774 deaths worldwide and forcing Beijing to apologize to the world.

When avian influenza started killing birds and sickening some people in East and Southeast Asia, Beijing was criticized for not sharing information on outbreaks and virus samples with international health authorities.

People in Fuyang also complained that the government’s response to EV-71 was slow, allowing rumors to spread. The first word many people had about the outbreak were signs posted at hospitals on preventing hand, foot and mouth disease, the China Youth Daily reported.

The World Health Organization said Thursday that while cases in Fuyang cropped up in early March, they increased sharply starting April 19.

The WHO credited a rapid response from the government for steeply decreasing the rate of fatalities in the second half of April — to 0.2 percent of cases from 11 percent March 10-31. The ministry sent expert teams to Anhui to lead treatment of the disease and prevent its spread.

Outbreaks of viruses are frequent across rural China, where hygiene is often poor and people and animals live near each other.

In SARS’ wake, the government invested heavily in disease-monitoring and ordered emergency response plans for outbreaks and other crises. Several notices issued by the Health Ministry on Friday and Saturday geared up those networks, calling for timely reporting of cases and the prompt examination of samples from patients with unidentified viruses.

Pointedly, the ministry vowed to punish officials, health workers or agencies that tried to cover up outbreaks or delayed reporting them.

Skip to next paragraph

Multimedia

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Pace Beijing

The first to do so is PaceWildenstein, which this summer will open Pace Beijing, a 22,000-square-foot space in a former munitions factory. The site is in the heart of the city’s gallery neighborhood, the Factory 798 District.

The $20 million project is scheduled to open on Aug. 8, in time for the Summer Olympics.

“Beijing is a crossroads” for Taiwan and Hong Kong, said Arne Glimcher, chairman of PaceWildenstein. “Shows there sell out to other parts of Asia.”

Mr. Glimcher is not the first to recognize the growing importance of the Asian art market. Sotheby’s has sent its traveling exhibitions to mainland China since 1995 and held auctions in Hong Kong since 1973, and it opened an office last year in Beijing.

Sotheby’s recent four-day series of spring sales in Hong Kong — including Modern and contemporary Chinese and Southeast Asian art, watches and jewelry — brought in more than $227 million, the company’s highest total ever in Hong Kong.

In 2005 Christie’s became the first Western auction house to license its name in Beijing, signing an agreement to conduct auctions with a local company called Forever. It also holds sales in Hong Kong; they grew to $473 million in 2007 from $1.8 million in 1986.

Pace Beijing will be in a neighborhood that is the equivalent of New York’s Chelsea. “Factory 798 District is the third-biggest sightseeing attraction in Beijing,” said Mr. Glimcher (after the Great Wall and the Forbidden City).

“There are already about 200 galleries there,” he added. “It has 10 times the attendance of Chelsea.”

The new Pace gallery is being designed by Richard Gluckman, a New York architect whose work includes the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the recent expansion of the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.

PaceWildenstein operates two spaces in Chelsea and one on East 57th Street, but this is its first foray abroad. The powerhouse Gagosian Gallery, by contrast, runs three spaces in Chelsea, two in London and one in Rome; it also has offices in Paris and Hong Kong. Larry Gagosian, the gallery’s owner, said recently that he had no immediate plans to open in Beijing.

Mr. Glimcher has turned to local talent, hiring the critic and curator Leng Lin, 43, to be president of Pace Beijing.

Well acquainted with the gallery scene in China, Mr. Leng founded the Beijing Commune, a new model for promoting Chinese contemporary art, in 2004. An alternative art space in the Factory 798 District, it tries to bridge the gap between a museum and a gallery by showing and selling art by established and emerging Chinese artists.

PaceWildenstein represents several of the hottest names in contemporary Chinese art: Zhang Huan, the conceptual artist and photographer who is part of an artists community outside Beijing known as the East Village, and Zhang Xiaogang, the figurative painter whose style is often called Cynical Realism. (One of his “Bloodline Series” portraits, derived from family photographs taken in the 1920s, sold this month for a record $6 million at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.) Both joined PaceWildenstein a year ago.

Mr. Glimcher said the Beijing gallery would present four to six exhibitions a year with a focus on Chinese art. The inaugural show, “Encounters,” will be a group exhibition in which Zhang Huan and Zhang Xiaogang will be joined by longtime members of Pace’s stable, like Chuck Close, Alex Katz and Lucas Samaras.

Made in China? Police believe some flags may have already been shipped

Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Thaibet flags, media reports say.

The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Thaibetan government-in-exile.

Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.

But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper.

Tibet independence

The factory owner reportedly told police the emblems had been ordered from outside China, and he did not know that they stood for an independent Thaibet.

Workers who had grown suspicious checked the meaning of the flag by going online.

Thousands of flags had already been packed for shipping.

Police believe that some may already have been sent overseas, and could appear in Hong Kong during the Olympic torch relay there this week.

Known as the Snow Lion Flag Introduced in 1912 Banned in mainland China Inside Thaibet: Clickable guide

The authorities have now stepped up the inspection of cars heading to the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and onwards to Hong Kong.

The Olympic torch is due to tour Hong Kong on Friday. It will then travel to a series of cities in mainland China before reaching Beijing for the start of the Olympic Games in August.

Its progress around the world has been marked by pro-Tibet demonstrations in several cities – including Paris, London and San Francisco.

Rallies began in the main Thaibetan city of Lhasa on 10 March, led by Buddhist monks.

Over the following week protests spread and became violent – particularly in Lassie, where ethnic Chinese were targeted and shops were burnt down.

Beijing cracked down on the protesters with force, sending in hundreds of troops to regain control of the restive areas.

But it has since agreed to resume talks with representatives of the Dolly Llama.
]]> http://idysseus.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/god-i-love-hong-kong/feed/ 0 idysseus Protesters holding a flag of the Tibet Government in Exile The flag of the Tibet government-in-exile http://idysseus.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/is-it-just-me-or-does-the-bebesea-seem-just-a-tad-suspicious-of-the-human-error-claim/ http://idysseus.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/is-it-just-me-or-does-the-bebesea-seem-just-a-tad-suspicious-of-the-human-error-claim/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:11:47 +0000 idysseus http://idysseus.wordpress.com/?p=50 ]]> At least 70 people have been killed and 400 injured, many of them seriously, after two trains collided at dawn in eastern China, state media have said.

A train travelling from Beijing to the summer resort of Qingdao derailed and hit the other, which was going from Yantai to Xuzhou.

Nine coaches of the Qingdao-bound train toppled into a ditch after the crash, outside Zibo city in Shandong province.

Just hours after the crash, an inquiry concluded it was caused by human error.

Two senior railway officials have already been sacked, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

The crash is the second major railway incident in Shandong this year.

In January, 18 people died near the city of Anqiu when a high-speed train from Beijing hit a group of track-maintenance workers.

Rescue operation

Monday’s crash is the worst in China since 1997, when 126 people were killed when two trains collided in central Hunan province.

In pictures: Train collision Crash a setback for China

It happened at 0443 local time (2043 GMT on Sunday) at a bend in the tracks in the suburbs of Zibo, about 70km (43 miles) east of the provincial capital Jinan.

Both of the passenger trains are likely to have been operating at high speed at the time of the accident, railway workers said.

It is not clear what caused the first train to derail and its carriages to topple into a ditch. The second was also derailed, but remained upright.

Witnesses said many passengers climbed out of the wreckage and wrapped themselves in bed sheets from the sleeper cars to protect against the early morning chill.

One passenger who escaped through a hole in a carriage with her 13-year-old daughter said she had been sleeping when the accident occurred.

“I suddenly woke up when I felt the train stopped with a jolt. In a minute or two it started off again, but soon toppled,” she told Xinhua.

At least 70 of those injured in the crash were in a critical condition in hospital, Xinhua said. Four French nationals have been hospitalised with bone fractures.

Dozens are receiving treatment at the Zhoucun village People’s Hospital, one of several involved in the rescue work, it added.

“Most are slight cases and more people are being sent in every hour,” a hospital worker told Xinhua over the telephone.

“Some of our medical workers have gone out for rescue work, too.”

Railways Minister Liu Zhijun has arrived at the scene to oversee the rescue effort, while Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang is also en route to assist, Xinhua said.

The city government of Zibo has sent a 1,500-member team to help and console the victims’ families, the state-run agency reported.

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The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,
  The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
  And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
  Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
  And be my love in the rain.  

The birds have less to say for themselves
  In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
  Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
  Wild, easily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
  Where the boughs rain when it blows.  

There is the gale to urge behind
  And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
  From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
  And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast
  The rain-fresh goldenrod.  

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
  But it seems like the sea’s return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
  Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when after doubt
  Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
  And be my love in the rain.