Li Bai (c. 701–762), also known by his courtesy name Taibai, was a Chinese poet highly praised as one of the greatest and most important poets of the Tang dynasty, and one of the most significant in all of Chinese poetry. He and his friend Du Fu (712–770) were among the most famous poets during the Tang dynasty, a time often called the "Golden Age of Chinese Poetry." The term "Three Wonders" refers to Li Bai's poetry, Pei Min's swordplay, and Zhang Xu's calligraphy.

About 1,000 poems are believed to have been written by Li Bai. His poems were collected in an important Tang dynasty anthology called Heyue yingling ji, compiled in 753 by Yin Fan. Thirty-four of his poems are included in Three Hundred Tang Poems, an anthology first published in the 18th century. Around the same time, translations of his poems began appearing in Europe. In Ezra Pound’s famous collection Cathay (1915), 11 of the 19 poems are from Li Bai.

Li Bai’s poems often celebrate friendship, nature, solitude, and the joy of drinking. Some of his most famous works include "Waking from Drunkenness on a Spring Day" (春日醉起言志), "The Hard Road to Shu" (蜀道難), "Bring in the Wine" (將進酒), and "Quiet Night Thought" (靜夜思). These poems are still taught in Chinese schools today. In the West, translations of his poems continue to be made in many languages. His life is also surrounded by legends, such as a story that he drowned after trying to grab the moon’s reflection in a river while drunk.

Many aspects of Li Bai’s life are reflected in his poems, which describe places he visited, friends he said goodbye to, his imaginative thoughts, news of events, and descriptions of nature. His early poems were written during a time of peace and prosperity under a supportive emperor. This changed with the start of the An Lushan Rebellion, which caused widespread war and suffering in northern China. Li Bai’s poems from this period show different themes and emotions. Unlike his friend Du Fu, Li Bai did not live to see the end of the chaos. Li Bai is also shown in the Wu Shuang Pu (无双谱; 無雙譜; "Table of Peerless Heroes") by Jin Guliang.

Names

Li Bai's name has been written using the Latin alphabet in different ways, such as Li Bai, Li Po, Li Bo (based on Standard Chinese pronunciation) and Ri Haku (based on Japanese pronunciation). The different Chinese spellings happen because his given name (白) has two pronunciations in Standard Chinese: bó (used in formal writing) and bái (used in everyday speech). Earlier writers used the Wade–Giles system, while modern writers use the pinyin system. Scholars believe that during the Tang dynasty, people likely pronounced his name as "Bhæk." His courtesy name was Taibai (太白), which means "Great White," as the planet Venus was called at that time. According to the New Book of Tang, this name was chosen because Li Bai's mother dreamed of Venus when she gave birth to him. His courtesy name has been written in various ways, such as Li Taibo, Li Taibai, and Li Tai-po. In Japan, his name and courtesy name are often written as "Ri Haku" and "Ri Taihaku," respectively.

Li Bai is also known by his art name, Qīnglián Jūshì (青莲居士), which translates to "Householder of the Azure Lotus." He is also called by other names, including "Immortal of Poetry" (詩仙), "Wine Immortal" (酒仙), "Banished Transcendent" (謫仙人), and "Poet-Knight-Errant" (詩俠).

Life

The two "Books of Tang," The Old Book of Tang and The New Book of Tang, are the main sources of written information about Li Bai. Other sources include evidence from poems written by or about Li Bai, as well as materials like the preface to his collected poems, written by his relative and literary executor, Li Yangbin.

Li Bai is believed to have been born in 701 in Suyab, an ancient city in Central Asia (now part of Kyrgyzstan), where his family had a successful business near the frontier. When Li Bai was about five years old, his family, led by his father, Li Ke, moved to Jiangyou, near modern Chengdu in Sichuan. There is uncertainty about why the family moved, as legal permission was usually required to leave border areas, especially if a family had been assigned or exiled there.

Two accounts from contemporaries, Li Yangbing (a family relative) and Fan Chuanzheng, say Li Bai’s family originally came from what is now Jingning County, Gansu. His ancestry is traditionally linked to Li Gao, a noble founder of the Western Liang state. This connection supports Li Bai’s claim to be related to the Tang dynasty’s royal family, as the Tang emperors also claimed descent from the Li rulers of Western Liang. This family was known as the Longxi Li lineage. Evidence suggests that during the Sui dynasty, Li Bai’s ancestors, who were classified as commoners at the time, were forced to move west from their original home in Gansu. They lived in Suiye (now Suyab in Kyrgyzstan) and possibly in Tiaozhi, near modern Ghazni, Afghanistan. These areas were part of the ancient Silk Road, and the Li family likely worked as merchants with prosperous businesses.

In 705, when Li Bai was four years old, his father secretly moved the family to Sichuan, near Chengdu. A monument in Zhongba Town, Jiangyou, Sichuan, now honors this event. Li Bai spent much of his childhood in Qinglian, a town in Changming County, Sichuan, which is now known as Qinglian Town in Jiangyou.

As a young boy, Li Bai read widely, including Confucian classics like The Classic of Poetry and The Classic of History, as well as other materials about astrology and philosophy, which Confucians often avoided. Though he did not take literacy exams, he learned to write poetry by age ten. He also enjoyed activities like taming birds, fencing, riding, hunting, and helping the poor. By his early twenties, he had become skilled in swordsmanship, as noted in his own writings:

Before he was twenty, Li Bai fought and killed several men, likely out of a sense of justice, following the tradition of chivalrous warriors.

In 720, Governor Su Ting met Li Bai and called him a genius. Though Li Bai wanted to become an official, he never took the civil service exam.

Li Bai married four times. His first marriage, in 727 in Anlu, Hubei, was to the granddaughter of a former government minister from the well-connected Xu family. He lived in a home owned by his wife’s family on Mount Bi for about ten years. In 744, he married a poet named Zong, with whom he had children and exchanged poems expressing love for her and their children. His wife, Zong, was the granddaughter of Zong Chuke, a Tang dynasty official.

In his mid-twenties, around 725, Li Bai left Sichuan, traveling down the Yangzi River to Nanjing. He then returned up the river to Yunmeng in Hubei, where he briefly married the granddaughter of a retired prime minister, Xu Yushi. During his travels, he met famous people and gave away much of his wealth to friends in need.

In 730, Li Bai stayed near the capital, Chang’an (modern Xi’an), but failed to find a position. He sailed down the Yellow River, stopped in Luoyang, and visited Taiyuan before returning home. In 735, he was in Shanxi, where he intervened in a court case involving Guo Ziyi, who later repaid him during the An Shi disturbances. By 740, he moved to Shandong, where he joined a group of poets and writers known as the "Six Idlers of the Bamboo Brook" or the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove." He later traveled in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, becoming friends with a Daoist priest named Wu Yun. In 742, Wu Yun praised Li Bai to the Emperor, leading to Li Bai’s summons to the imperial court.

Emperor Xuanzong, known as Minghuang, summoned Li Bai to Chang’an. Li Bai’s personality impressed both aristocrats and common people, including the poet He Zhizhang, who called him the "Immortal Exiled from Heaven." After an initial meeting, the Emperor held a banquet in his honor, even personally seasoning his soup. The Emperor employed Li Bai as a translator, as he knew a non-Chinese language, and later gave him a position at the Hanlin Academy, which provided scholarly and poetic support to the Emperor.

When summoned to the palace, Li Bai was often drunk but still performed well. He wrote poems about the Emperor’s favorite concubine, Yang Guifei. A story claims that once, while drunk, Li Bai got his boots muddy, and the powerful eunuch Gao Lishi was asked to help clean them in front of the Emperor. Offended, Gao Lishi later convinced Yang Guifei to dislike Li Bai’s poems. At their request, the Emperor sent Li Bai away from the court with gifts of gold and silver. After leaving the court, Li Bai officially became a Daoist, living in Shandong and traveling widely for about ten years, writing poems. He lived and wrote at Bishan, now known as Baizhao Mountain in Yandian, Hubei.

Themes

Li Bai was a famous Chinese poet known for his deep connection to the long history of Chinese poetry. He wrote about many topics, including the joy of drinking wine, the lives of ordinary people, and the sadness of war. His poetry often used strong images and showed great skill in following traditional poetic rules. He also used different characters or personas in his poems and created works that felt both traditional and completely his own.

Li Bai admired the poetry of earlier times and often used styles from the past. For example, many of his poems were based on traditional folk songs called yuefu. He even wrote a collection of poems titled Gu Feng, meaning "In the Old Manner," which honored the poetry of earlier dynasties like the Han and Wei. He also referenced other famous poets, such as Qu Yuan and Tao Yuanming, in his work.

Li Bai often wrote about the past in his poems, especially in a style called huaigu, which means reflecting on old times. These poems showed how Chinese poets had long been inspired by the ruins of ancient achievements.

Many people admired Li Bai’s love for wine. He wrote many poems about drinking, more than any other poet. In China, drinking wine was not seen as bad, and Li Bai was part of a group of poets called the "Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup." A scholar named James J.Y. Liu explained that the word zui in Chinese poetry does not mean being drunk, but rather being mentally absorbed by the experience of drinking. Li Bai’s poems about wine showed both his joy and his deep connection to the tradition of Chinese poetry.

Two of Li Bai’s most famous poems are Rising Drunk on a Spring Day, Telling My Intent and Drinking Alone by Moonlight. These poems show how he used wine and drunkenness as themes. In Rising Drunk on a Spring Day, he writes about spending the day drunk and enjoying the beauty of spring. In Drinking Alone by Moonlight, he imagines drinking with the moon and his own shadow, showing his loneliness and imagination.

Li Bai’s poetry often included fantasy and a sense of wonder, which some scholars link to his interest in Taoism. Taoism is a belief system that values nature, simplicity, and the idea of becoming immortal. His poems often describe mountains, celestial beings, and magical scenes, showing how he connected with the traditions of older poetry.

Many Chinese poets wrote about missing home and feeling far from family, a common theme in Chinese poetry. Li Bai’s poem A Quiet Night Thought is a simple but powerful example of this. It uses images of moonlight and frost to express homesickness.

Li Bai was also skilled in writing yuefu poems, which were called the greatest by a Ming-dynasty scholar. He especially excelled in gushi poems, or "old-style" poems, which gave him more freedom to write about any topic. One famous example is Shu Dao Nan, which describes the difficult mountain roads of Sichuan.

Li Bai was also a master of jueju poems, a short form of poetry that required great skill to write clearly and beautifully. His work continues to be studied and admired for its creativity and connection to Chinese poetic traditions.

Influence

Li Bai's poetry had a major influence during his time and for many years after in China. He was often compared with Du Fu. A recent scholar, Paula Varsano, says that "in the literary world, they were and still are considered the greatest poets of the Tang dynasty—or even of all of China." She also notes that there has been a long-lasting debate about whether Li Bai or Du Fu was better, which has remained an important topic in discussions about their work. Li Bai's influence spread beyond China, where he was known as Ri Haku in Japan. This influence continues today in areas like poetry, painting, and literature.

During his lifetime, Li Bai traveled widely and visited the court in Chang'an. There, he met and said goodbye to many poets of his time. These meetings and separations were common times for writing poems, as was the case with his relationship with Du Fu.

After his death, Li Bai's influence continued to grow. For example, four centuries later during the Song dynasty, the poet Yang Wanli wrote a poem that referenced one of Li Bai's poems, as well as two others, using the same old-style poetry form.

In the 20th century, Li Bai's work even influenced the poetry of Mao Zedong.

In China, his poem "Quiet Night Thoughts," which expresses the feelings of someone missing home, has been widely memorized by students and quoted by adults.

Li Bai is sometimes honored as an immortal in Chinese folk religion and is also considered a god in the Cao Dai religion of Vietnam.

The Austrian composer Gustav Mahler used German translations of four of Li Bai's poems as the basis for four songs in his symphony Das Lied von der Erde in 1908. The American composer Harry Partch created a work called Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po in the 1930s, based on translations of Li Bai's poems. Around the same time, the Swiss composer Volkmar Andreae set eight of Li Bai's poems to music for a song cycle. In Brazil, the songwriter Beto Furquim included a musical version of the poem "Jing Ye Si" in his album Muito Prazer.

Li Bai's influence in the West partly comes from Ezra Pound's translations of some of his poems in the collection Cathay (Pound spelled his name as "Rihaku" based on the Japanese version). His descriptions of nature, friendships, love of wine, and observations of life appear in many of his popular poems. Some poems, like Changgan xing (translated by Ezra Pound as "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter"), show the struggles or emotions of everyday people. Other translations of his poems were based on Japanese versions, which were influenced by the work of scholars like Ernest Fenollosa, Mori, and Ariga.

Gustav Mahler included four of Li Bai's poems in his symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde. These poems were adapted into German by Hans Bethge, who published them in a collection called Die chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute). Bethge's translations were based on earlier French translations by Hans Heilmann, who used translations from the 19th century by the Marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys and Judith Gautier. Mahler made changes to Bethge's text for his work.

Li Bai's poetry also influenced the writer Gary Snyder during his studies of Asian culture and Zen. Li Bai's way of describing scenes helped create different styles within the Beat Generation's writing.

Translation

Jean Joseph Marie Amiot, a Jesuit missionary in Beijing, introduced Li Bai's poetry to Europe. He included it in his book Portraits des Célèbres Chinois, published in the series Mémoires concernant l'histoire, les sciences, les arts, les mœurs, les usages, &c. des Chinois, par les missionnaires de Pekin between 1776 and 1797. Additional translations into French were later published by the Marquis d'Hervey de Saint-Denys in his 1862 work Poésies de l'Époque des Thang.

Joseph Edkins presented a paper titled "On Li Tai-po" to the Peking Oriental Society in 1888. The paper was later published in the society's journal. The early scholar Herbert Allen Giles translated Li Bai's poetry in his 1898 book Chinese Poetry in English Verse and again in his History of Chinese Literature (1901). Another early English translator was L. Cranmer-Byng (1872–1945). His books Lute of Jade: Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China (1909) and A Feast of Lanterns (1916) both included poems by Li Bai.

Modernist English translations of Li Bai's poetry influenced writers like Ezra Pound in Cathay (1915) and Amy Lowell in Fir-Flower Tablets (1921). Neither used the original Chinese directly: Pound relied on translations by Ernest Fenollosa and interpretations by professors Mori and Ariga; Lowell used translations by Florence Ayscough. Witter Bynner, with the help of Kiang Kang-hu, included several of Li Bai's poems in The Jade Mountain (1939). Arthur Waley translated a few of Li Bai's poems for the Asiatic Review and later included them in More Translations from the Chinese. In 1922, Shigeyoshi Obata claimed his book The Works of Li Po was the first to focus entirely on a single Chinese poet for English-speaking readers. A translation of Li Bai's poem Green Moss by William Carlos Williams was sent as a letter to poet David Rafael Wang, who noted Williams' style resembled that of Pound.

Li Bai's poetry became popular among translators because of its clear and simple style. Later translations are too many to list here. A large collection of Li Bai's poems, translated by many different people, is included in Classical Chinese Literature by John Minford and Joseph S. M. Lau (2000). A more recent collection, featuring Li Bai's poems in both Chinese and English with background information, is found in My China in Tang Poetry, Book 1: Superstars by Susan Wan Dolling (2024).

In popular culture

• In the 2000 TV show The Legend of Lady Yang, Li Bai was played by Wong Wai-leung.
• An actor who plays Li Bai narrates films called Wonders of China and Reflections of China at the China Pavilion at Epcot.
• A Chinese singer named AnAn sings Li Bai’s poem Hard Roads in Shu in a trailer for the game Total War: Three Kingdoms.
• In the game Civilization VI, Li Bai is described as a great writer.
• Li Bai is the main character in the 2023 movie Chang’an, produced by Light Chaser Animation Studios.
• A fictional version of Li Bai, named Sima Zian, the Banished Immortal, appears as a secondary character in Guy Gavriel Kay’s novel Under Heaven.
• A fictional version of Li Bai is mentioned and appears in the English-translated novel Legend of Exorcism (Tianbao Fuyao Lu), written by Arise Zhang, also known as Fei Tian Ye Xiang.