Literature & Life

The air of the High Tang, a single word lasting a thousand years — the most radiant age of Chinese letters.

From the Book of Songs to Tang poetry and Song ci, China is a nation of poetry: Li Bai wrote a hundred poems on a measure of wine, Su Shi turned ci into a record of a life. Every Chinese speaker's “bright moonlight before my bed” is a line written a thousand years ago.

Over fifty thousand poems survive; Li Bai and Du Fu as twin peaks — the poetic gene of the mother tongue.

Feeling in lines long and short, the graceful beside the bold: the utmost expression of Song literati spirit.

The literature of an era: Liu Yong, Su Shi, Li Qingzhao and Xin Qiji each opening a new realm.

The birth of street-level letters: plain, alive, writing out every parting and warmth of the human world.

Twin summits of sanqu and zaju — Guan Hanqing, Ma Zhiyuan and Wang Shifu as the social conscience of the stage.

Gods and demons, history, chivalry, human feeling: four dimensions of imagination carrying the ultimate Chinese narratives.

Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, Dream of the Red Chamber — the shared text and common language of the nation.

The summit of classical fiction: one family history writing out the splendor and dissolving of the human world.

By Cao Xueqin — "since Dream of the Red Chamber, traditional thought and traditional writing alike were broken open."

Measuring mountains and rivers on foot: opening the tradition of field observation and travel writing.

Thirty years in the field — father of karst studies, and the man who set the Yangtze source right.

Rivers as its thread, stringing mountains, towns, products and geographic memory.

By Li Daoyuan — the founding work of hydrology and the fountainhead of landscape prose.