China's two favourite poets were born 1,300 years ago, at the beginning of the 8th Century. The language has changed so little that they remain easy for modern Chinese people to read, and their themes are still relevant today - from friendship, love and landscape to the stench of political corruption.
Kaiser Kuo, a founder of China's first heavy-metal band, is probably one of the very few rock musicians, in any country, who draws inspiration from a poet born in 701AD.
"He was quite a drunkard... and writing some of his best poetry apparently, while completely inebriated. You know, he's wild and associated with a kind of unbridled revelry, and yeah that's part of why I love him," says Kuo.
He is talking about Li Bai, a poet born in Central Asia, who became a wandering superstar poet in China, known as "the fallen immortal" or "the immortal of wine".
Kuo's band got together in 1988 when China had just emerged from isolation, and was falling head over heels in love with foreign culture. Moody and long-haired, the young men named their group Tang Dynasty in tribute to the artistic golden age to which Li Bai belonged.
"If you were to grab any kid off the street and ask him, 'What was the greatest dynasty in China's history?' nine out of 10 of them would answer the Tang.
"Part of the reason they would give was because there was a real ethic of cosmopolitanism. You know, almost a fetish for things foreign during the time," says Kuo.
"And it was precisely because of this openness, this receptiveness to foreign ideas, including religions like Buddhism, to foreign arts, [that] I think people would understand that a band working in an entirely foreign idiom, calling itself Tang Dynasty, was meant to evoke that same spirit."
Every Chinese person learns poems by Li Bai, and the country's other favourite poet, Du Fu, from childhood.
【(公众号：英语学习)】
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