Li Po the Chinese Poet
was during this period that he became one of the "Six Idlers of the Bamboo Valley" who gathered in the mountain of Chu-lai for the jolly fellowship of wine and song. He traveled extensively, too. Once he was in the city of Lo-yang, enjoying the lavish hospitality of Tung Tsas-chiu, who had a special wine house built for the poet at the Tien-tsin bridge-head, where
Songs were bought with yellow gold, and laughter with
white jewels.[1]
Later the same host invited the poet to Ping-chou near Taiyuan-fu in Shansi, where Tung's father was stationed as the military commander. Here the two companions went on happy excursions, taking singing-girls out on the river by the dynastic shrine of Chin. It was in Ping-chou that the poet befriended Kuo Tsu-i, who was still a young soldier in the ranks, but who was later to become the savior of the empire as well as of the poet's life. In the year 738 Li Po was back in Shantung when Tu Fu, his one great and formidable rival in poetic fame, arrived in the province and met him. At once a warm friendship and exchange of poems began that lasted lifelong, and that makes the happiest and most memorable chapter in China's literary history. Tu Fu was the younger of the two. They slept together under one coverlet (so he tells us in one of his poems), and went hand in hand like two brothers.[2]
Li Po traveled south to the lands of Wu and Yueh of old to wander amid the ruins of once glorious palaces and among the lakes of lotus lilies, and chose to
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