BBC documentary spotlights China's Shakespeare

Song of Eight Drinking Immortals

Li Bai makes a hundred poems out of one quart of ale,

in the marketplace of Chang'an he sleeps in the tavern.

The Son of Heaven called him to come,

he wouldn't get on the boat,

he himself declared: "Your subject is an immortal in his ale."

Gazing on the Peak

And what then is Daizong like?

over Qi and Lu, green unending.

Creation compacted spirit splendors here,

Dark and Light, riving dusk and dawn.

Exhilarating the breast, it produces layers of cloud;

splitting eye-pupils, it has homing birds entering.

Someday may I climb up to its highest summit,

with one sweeping view see how small all other mountains are.

View in Spring

The state broken, its mountains and rivers remain,

the city turns spring, deep with plants and trees.

Stirred by the time, flowers, sprinkling tears,

hating parting, birds, alarm the heart.

Beacon fires stretch through three months,

a letter from family worth ten thousand in silver.

I've scratched my white hair even shorter,

pretty much to the point where it won't hold a hatpin.