Inspired by the landscape
Dear Editors,
I enjoyed reading the article by Jingwen Luo and Mike Stephenson about the Chinese poet Li Bai (The Wanderer of the Chinese Landscape. Geoscientist 35(1), 18-26, 2025). Many other Chinese poets wandered the country and wrote poems about its landscapes. For example, Li Bai’s near contemporary Du Fu (712 – 770 CE) has an equally high reputation and spent years in exile, a frequent state for the literate group of Chinese that we describe as ‘mandarins’. They would console themselves by meeting to drink and exchange poems. Most were male but there were women, notably Li Qingzhao (1084 – 1155 CE). She wrote this poem, Spring in Wuling for her husband Zhao Mingcheng when he was away. Invaders from the north had driven them from their beloved homeland.
Draughts stir the dust and blossoms fall,
I’m all alone with no one here to sweep,
It’s late and I’m too tired to comb my hair.
If I could chat, all I would do is weep.
They tell me at Twin Streams, Spring is now fair
And we could plan to drift down in a boat,
Although I’m still afraid it wouldn’t float
But sink beneath the weight of all my care.
Classical Chinese poems including those in Luo and Stephenson’s article have regular patterns of characters and rhymes. I have tried to invoke these aspects of Li’s original by scanning and rhyming this translation.
Roger Mason
Retired Professor, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China
