Happy Friday everyone,
Thank you for subscribing Wu Fei’s Music Daily! This is the 102nd episode — Bringing in the wine 将进酒。
It was recorded yesterday on guzueng and voice by me. The poem is Li Bai’s Bringing in the wine (将进酒), written around A.D. 752.
Li Bai (李白 701–762 ) is my favorite Chinese poet from the Tang Dynasty. You can read more about him here.
Rough translation of the poem from here:
BRINGING IN THE WINE
See how the Yellow River's waters move out of heaven.
Entering the ocean, never to return.
See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers,
Though silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow.
...Oh, let a man of spirit venture where he pleases
And never tip his golden cup empty toward the moon!bai
Since heaven gave the talent, let it be employed!
Spin a thousand pieces of silver, all of them come back!
Cook a sheep, kill a cow, whet the appetite,
And make me, of three hundred bowls, one long drink!
...To the old master, Cen,
And the young scholar, Danqiu,
Bring in the wine!
Let your cups never rest!
Let me sing you a song!
Let your ears attend!
What are bell and drum, rare dishes and treasure?
Let me be forever drunk and never come to reason!
Sober men of olden days and sages are forgotten,
And only the great drinkers are famous for all time.
...Prince Chen paid at a banquet in the Palace of Perfection
Ten thousand coins for a cask of wine, with many a laugh and quip.
Why say, my host, that your money is gone?
Go and buy wine and we'll drink it together!
My flower-dappled horse,
My furs worth a thousand,
Hand them to the boy to exchange for good wine,
And we'll drown away the woes of ten thousand generations
This is a calligraphy of this poem by a good friend of my father in Beijing. It was a gift from him to my father for my parents’ departure moving to the US a year ago.
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