The period 713-756AD was when the Tang Dynasty reached its peak. It was also China’s golden age of poetry. Then it is no surprise that the era produced one of China’s greatest poets, Li Bai (李白). Li Bai’s life time (701-762AD) neatly framed this period.

Li Bai (about 701-762 CE) was a citizen of Sichuan, China. While still in his teens, he retired to mountains in the north of the province to live with a religious recluse by the name of Tunyen-tzu. The two of them were said to keep strange birds as pets. Li Bai later traveled down the Yangtze to Yun-meng, a town north of the river and Tung-ting Lake, where he got married.

recognized by many as the greatest of a highly talented array of Tang poets. He stayed for a few years in various places, traveled extensively, and became for a time one of the Six Idlers of the Bamboo Valley, who celebrated wine and played music in the mountains of Chu-lai. All this did not provide a satisfactory existence for his first wife, who left him with their two children. He appears to have married three times.

Li Bai entered the capital, Chang-an, in about 742 and his poetry found great success at the imperial court. However, court plotters claimed that one his poems was a malicious satire. Li Bai found it would be best? to retire to the mountains again, and then wandered around China for about ten years, where he got involved in a major revolt. He was imprisoned under sentence of death, which was commuted to perpetual banishment to the southwest region of the empire.

What was the life attitude of Li Bai?

An aura of romanticism pervades Li Bai's life and poetry. With his fondness for adventure and traveling, his search for alchemy and the elixir of life, his love of and intimate communion with nature, he exemplifies the typical Taoist trends in his poetry. It reflects the kind of melancholy and despondence that a man feels when he finds his talents unrecognized and his life wasted.

What is the An-Si Rebellion’s affect on Li Bai?

During the An-Si Rebellion, he saw what he considered as an opportunity to realize his goal of ascending the seat of power. Thus in 755 he joined the force led by the emperor’s 16th son, Prince Lin. However, one of Lin’s brothers Hun had already ascended the throne. In the ensuing battles, Lin was defeated, captured and executed. Because of the association Li Bai was to be executed as well but was saved thanks to the great efforts of Kwok Tze-yi who was credited with restoring the Tang Dynasty by leading the battle against the An-SI rebels. Instead he was exiled to Yelon, present day Guizhou. Later on, the old emperor died and he was pardoned.

What are the mysteries of Li Bai life?

The facts of his life come to us through a similar veil of contradictions and legends. Where he was born is unknown--and there are those who say he was of Turkik origin--but it seems he was probably born in central Asia and was raised in Sichuan province. His brashness and bravado are characteristic of a tradition of poets from this region, including the great Song dynasty poet Su Shi. He claimed he was related to the imperial family, though this claim is likely to be spurious. Perhaps he wondered as a Taoist hermit in his teens; certainly Taoist fantasy permeates his work.

What are remarkable subjects of Li Bai’s poems?

Most of Li Bai’s poems were occasional poems (poems written for specific occasions), others incorporated wild journeys, Sichuan colloquial speech, and dramatic monologues such as his famous "A Song of Zhanggan Village." Therefore, it seemed difficult to find out some remarkable subjects in his poems.

What is Li Bai’s name?

Li is the family name, or surname. His given name is written with a Chinese character, which is romanized variously as Po, Bo, Bai, Pai, and other variants. Even in Hanyu Pinyin, there is ambiguity, as Bái is the common variant and Bó the literary variant (and thus presumably closer to the original pronunciation). His style name, also known as courtesy name, was Tài Bó, literally "Great White," a reference to the planet Venus. Thus, combining the family name with the style name, we get variants such as Li Tai Bo, Li Tai Pai, and so on. He also may be known by the pseudonym Qinglianjushi, meaning Retired Scholar of the Azure Lotus. Furthermore, he has the nicknames Poet Transcendent and Poet Knight-Errant. In works derived through Japanese, he is sometimes known as Ri Haku. All of these variants, and more, with or without hyphenation, have been historically attested to.

What is Li Bai’s influence?

His colloquial speech, and confessional celebration of a sensual flamboyance and fallible self made him the best loved and most imitated Chinese poet in English and helped to establish a conversational, intimate tone in modern American poetry. Ezra Pound's Cathay put him at the center of the revolution in modern verse. All these qualities, plus an extraordinary lucidity of image, made

him extremely popular in China as well, in his days and to nowadays.

He was an influential figure in the Chinese cult of spontaneity, which emphasized the poet's genius in composing a poem immediately: "Inspiration hot, each stroke of my pen shakes the five mountains."