Li Bai’s poem to Wang Lun Where is Li Bai going?

Li Bai is going to his uncle Li Bingyang’s house in Nanling.

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: "Mr. Do you like traveling? There are ten miles of peach blossoms here. Do you like drinking here?" Li Bai went there happily. When he arrived in Jing 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 named 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, polished ink, and wrote this poem to Wang Lun.

"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 random. He first used "a thousand feet deep" to praise the depth of the water in Peach Blossom Pond, and 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, the imagination is rich and unique, and it is endlessly memorable. Although it has only four sentences and twenty-eight characters, it is very popular and is one of the most widely circulated masterpieces among Li Bai's poems.