Bai Juyi was as famous as Yuan Zhen in his early years, and they were collectively called Yuan Bai. Bai Juyi's poetry has a wide range of themes, diverse forms, and simple and popular language. He is known as the "Poetry Demon" and the "Poetry King". He became a bachelor of the Hanlin Academy and a doctor of Zuo Zanshan. In 846 AD, Bai Juyi died in Luoyang and was buried in Xiangshan. There is "Bai's Changqing Collection" handed down from generation to generation, and his representative poems include "Song of Everlasting Sorrow", "Charcoal Seller", "Pipa Play" and so on.
Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi first met during the Diocese examination. Bai Juyi was thirty-one and Yuan Zhen was twenty-four. From then on, they developed from colleagues to poetry friends. Although they had close contacts with some literati at that time, such as Yuan Zhen and Li Shen, Bai Juyi and Liu Yuxi, they were each other's closest poetry friends.