Gift to Wang Lun (Author: Li Baitang)
Li Bai was about to leave in a boat when he suddenly heard singing on the shore.
The water in Peach Blossom Pond is a thousand feet deep, not as deep as Wang Lun’s love for me.
Vernacular translation
Li Bai got on the boat and was about to leave when he suddenly heard the sound of singing from the shore.
Even if the Peach Blossom Pond is a thousand feet deep, it cannot compare to Wang Lun’s love for each other.
"To Wang Lun" is a farewell poem written by the great poet Li Bai of the Tang Dynasty to his local friend Wang Lun when he was traveling in Jing County (now Wannan, Anhui). The poem depicts the scene when Wang Lun came to see Li Bai off by singing songs when Li Bai was about to leave in a boat. It expressed Wang Lun's simple and sincere feelings for Li Bai very simply and naturally. "The water in Peach Blossom Pond is a thousand feet deep, not as deep as Wang Lun's love for me." Li Bai picked up two sentences at hand. He first used "a thousand feet deep" to praise the depth of the water in Peach Blossom Pond. Then he changed the word "less than" and used a comparative technique to compare. The invisible friendship turned into a tangible thousand-foot pond, vividly expressing Wang Lun's sincere and deep friendship for Li Bai. The language of the whole poem is fresh and natural, and the imagination is rich and unique. Although it has only four sentences and twenty-eight characters, it is very popular. It is one of the most widely circulated masterpieces among Li Bai's poems.
Creative background
When Li Bai visited Taohuatan in Jing County (in today's Anhui Province), Wang Lun from nearby Jia Village often entertained Li Bai with wine he brewed, and the two became friends. A deep friendship. The annotations of "Collection of Li Bai", "Three Hundred Tang Poems" and "Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty" published in the past dynasties all believe that Wang Lun was an ordinary villager Li Bai met when he traveled to Jingxian County. This view continues to this day. Today, Anhui scholars Wang Guangze and Li Zilong successively studied the "Wang Family Genealogy", "Wang Jian Gong Genealogy", and "Wang Family Genealogy" in Jingxian County, and confirmed that "Wang Lun, also known as Feng Lin, was a well-known figure in the Tang Dynasty", and was the same as Li Bai and Wang Wei and others had a good relationship, and they often exchanged poems and essays. During the Tianbao period of Kaiyuan, Wang Lun was the magistrate of Jing County, and Li Bai "went to wait for him, and he couldn't bear to say goodbye" (for details, see Li Zilong's "About Wang Lun" in the second volume of "Li Bai Academic Journal"). This poem may have been written by Li Bai when Wang Lun was already living in Peach Blossom Pond. Li Bai traveled from Guangling and Jinling to Xuancheng in the thirteenth year of Tianbao (754), so this poem should not be earlier than before.
According to Yuan Mei's "Supplement to Suiyuan Poems" of the Qing Dynasty, during the Tianbao period of the Tang Dynasty, Wang Lun, a powerful man in Jing County, heard that the great poet Li Bai went south to live in the home of his uncle Li Bingyang in Nanling. He was extremely happy and wrote to Li Bai: " Sir, do you like to travel? There are ten miles of peach blossoms here. Sir, do you like to drink here?" Li Bai went there happily. When he arrived in Jingxian County, Li Bai asked Wang Lun where the Taoyuan Restaurant was. Wang Lun replied: "Peach Blossom is the name of Tanshui, and there is no Peach Blossom. Wanjia is the owner of the shop whose surname is Wan, and there is no Wanjia Hotel." Li Bai laughed.
On the day Li Bai was leaving, Wang Lun gave Li Bai eight famous horses and ten bundles of silk, and sent his servants to deliver them to the ship. After giving a farewell banquet at home, Li Bai boarded a boat parked on Peach Blossom Pond. As the boat was about to leave the shore, he suddenly heard a burst of singing. Li Bai looked back and saw Wang Lun and many villagers walking on the shore singing to see him off. Li Bai was deeply moved by the host's deep friendship and simple way of seeing off guests. He immediately laid out paper, studied ink, and wrote this poem to Wang Lun.
——————————————————————————————From Baidu Encyclopedia