One of China’s greatest poets reflects on silence, on speech, and on a song in the heart of a friend.
Po Chu-i or Bai Juyi (772-846) was a career bureaucrat in the Chinese government, national and regional, whose abilities and frank criticisms brought a head-spinning series of promotions and demotions. He is also one of China’s best-loved poets. Below are three of his many short poems, one playful, one protesting, and one a thoughtful tribute to his closest friend.
The honours that come from God and those that come from men need to be put in the right order.
Mencius (?371-?289) or ‘Master Meng’ spent his career advising Chinese regional governments on public policy during a low-point in the Zhou Dynasty. Regional barons squabbled, taxed cruelly and chopped off heads, and all was flattery, corruption and ambition. Mencius saw no hope for the State in institutional reforms: each man must undertake his own personal reformation.