Li Bai
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Li Bai (c. 701–762), courtesy name Taibai, was a Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty and is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets in Chinese literature. With contemporaries such as Du Fu (712–770) he belonged to the flourishing of Tang poetry often called the "Golden Age of Chinese Poetry"; the phrase "Three Wonders" links his verse with Pei Min's swordplay and Zhang Xu's calligraphy. Around a thousand poems are attributed to him. His work was collected in the Heyue yingling ji, compiled by Yin Fan in 753, and thirty-four of his poems appear in the anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems, first published in the 18th century. Around that time translations of his poetry reached Europe; in Ezra Pound's Cathay (1915), eleven of nineteen poems are his. His verse became a model for celebrating friendship, nature, solitude and the joys of drinking, and pieces such as "Waking from Drunkenness on a Spring Day", "The Hard Road to Shu", "Bring in the Wine" and "Quiet Night Thought" are still taught in Chinese schools. His life took on a legendary colour, including tales of drunkenness and chivalry and the well-known story that he drowned while reaching from his boat for the moon's reflection. He is generally considered to have been born in 701, though his birthplace is debated between Mianyang in Sichuan and Suyab in present-day Kyrgyzstan; his family moved to Jiangyou, near Chengdu, when he was about five. In 742 Emperor Xuanzong summoned him to court, where he served at the Hanlin Academy. The An Lushan Rebellion darkened his later years, and he died in 762 before the chaos ended.