44 Facts About Li Bai

Li Bai, pronounced as Li Bo, courtesy name Taibai, was a Chinese poet, acclaimed from his own time to the present as a brilliant and romantic figure who took traditional poetic forms to new heights.

Li Bai's poems have been collected into the most important Tang dynasty poetry, Heyaue yingling ji, compiled in 753 by Yin Fan.

Thirty-four of Li Bai's poems are included in the anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems, which was first published in the 18th century.

Li Bai's life has even taken on a legendary aspect, including tales of drunkenness, chivalry, and the well-known tale that Li drowned when he reached from his boat to grasp the moon's reflection in the river while drunk.

Li Bai's rebellion led most of Northern China to be devastated by war and famine.

Li Bai is depicted in the Wu Shuang Pu by Jin Guliang.

Li Bai's name has been romanized as Li Bai, Li Po, Li Bo, and Ri Haku.

Li Bai is generally considered to have been born in 701, in Suyab of ancient Chinese Central Asia, where his family had prospered in business at the frontier.

In one hagiographic account, while Li Bai's mother was pregnant with him, she had a dream of a great white star falling from heaven.

Li Bai's wife was from the well-connected Wu family.

Li Bai made this his home for about ten years, living in a home owned by his wife's family on Mt.

Li Bai's wife, Zong, was a granddaughter of Zong Chuke, an important government official during the Tang dynasty and the interregnal period of Wu Zetian.

In 705, when Li Bai was four years old, his father secretly moved his family to Sichuan, near Chengdu, where he spent his childhood.

Li Bai then went back up-river, to Yunmeng, in what is Hubei, where his marriage to the granddaughter of a retired prime minister, Xu Yushi, seems to have formed but a brief interlude.

In 730, Li Bai stayed at Zhongnan Mountain near the capital Chang'an, and tried but failed to secure a position.

Li Bai sailed down the Yellow River, stopped by Luoyang, and visited Taiyuan before going home.

In 735, Li Bai was in Shanxi, where he intervened in a court martial against Guo Ziyi, who was later, after becoming one of the top Tang generals, to repay the favour during the An Shi disturbances.

Li Bai wandered about the area of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, eventually making friends with a famous Daoist priest, Wu Yun.

Indeed, after an initial audience, where Li Bai was questioned about his political views, the Emperor was so impressed that he held a big banquet in his honor.

Emperor Xuanzong employed him as a translator, as Li Bai knew at least one non-Chinese language.

Li Bai wrote several poems about the Emperor's beautiful and beloved Yang Guifei, the favorite royal consort.

Once, while drunk, Li Bai had gotten his boots muddy, and Gao Lishi, the most politically powerful eunuch in the palace, was asked to assist in the removal of these, in front of the Emperor.

Li Bai lived and wrote poems at Bishan in Yandian, Hubei.

Li Bai met Du Fu in the autumn of 744, when they shared a single room and various activities together, such as traveling, hunting, wine, and poetry, thus established a close and lasting friendship.

Li Bai became a staff adviser to Prince Yong, one of Ming Huang's sons, who was far from the top of the primogeniture list, yet named to share the imperial power as a general after Xuanzong had abdicated, in 756.

The famous and powerful army general Guo Ziyi and others intervened; Guo Ziyi was the very person whom Li Bai had saved from court martial a couple of decades before.

Li Bai headed toward Yelang with little sign of hurry, stopping for prolonged social visits, and writing poetry along the way, leaving detailed descriptions of his journey for posterity.

Notice of an imperial pardon recalling Li Bai reached him before he even got near Yelang.

Li Bai had only gotten as far as Wushan, when news of his pardon caught up with him in 759.

However, by the time that the imperial edict arrived in Dangtu, Anhui, Li Bai was already dead.

Li Bai was a skilled calligrapher, though there is only one surviving piece of his calligraphy work in his own handwriting that exists today.

One of the earliest endeavors at editing Li Bai's work was by his relative Li Yangbing, the magistrate of Dangtu, with whom he stayed in his final years and to whom he entrusted his manuscripts.

Li Bai had a strong sense of himself as being part of a poetic tradition.

An important characteristic of Li Bai's poetry "is the fantasy and note of childlike wonder and playfulness that pervade so much of it".

Li Bai wrote a number of poems from various viewpoints, including the personae of women.

Li Bai is well known for the technical virtuosity of his poetry and the mastery of his verses.

Li Bai especially excelled in the Gushi form, or "old style" poems, a type of poetry allowing a great deal of freedom in terms of the form and content of the work.

Li Bai was noted as a master of the jueju, or cut-verse.

Ming-dynasty poet Li Pan Long thought Li Bai was the greatest jueju master of the Tang dynasty.

Li Bai was noted for his mastery of the lushi, or "regulated verse", the formally most demanding verse form of the times.

Li Bai's poetry was immensely influential in his own time, as well as for subsequent generations in China.

Li Bai is sometimes worshipped as an immortal in Chinese folk religion and is considered a divinity in Vietnam Cao Dai religion.

Li Bai is influential in the West partly due to Ezra Pound's versions of some of his poems in the collection Cathay,.

Li Bai became a favorite among translators for his straightforward and seemingly simple style.