The Greatest Chinese Poet Li Bai 李白 Part I

[@Moppup]

I appreciate your academic rigor and deep cultural context in regard to these poems. They are truly beautiful.

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

Thank you very much for your encouragement. It means a lot to me. Who is your favourite Chinese poet? Li Bai, Du Fu, or Wang Wei?

[@bridgetphillips7462]

I'm so glad I found your channel! I am learning Mandarin and studying Tang poets/poetry right now. You answered some of my questions. Thank you for the wonderful content. 谢谢你😊

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

That is wonderful. I am very happy my videos can be of some help to you. I also enjoy very much researching and making the videos. It would be great if you would recommend my channel to your friends or classmates so that more people can enjoy the beauty of classical Chinese poetry. By the way, do you have a favorite poet or poem? I would be happy to make a video for you.

[@bridgetphillips7462]

@@dr.gaosclassroom I also enjoy research in both history and literature. I do not have classmates, but I will definitely recommend your channel to friends with similar interests.
That is kind of you to offer to make a video. Since I am new to learning Tang poets/poetry, I'm not sure I have a favorite poem yet. Chinese poetry is so different from English. Right now, I am trying to learn to first translate, and understand, and then understand within the context of the time and culture. I am learning to appreciate the deeper meanings of these poems this way. 😊

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

@@bridgetphillips7462 It is just so wonderful that we share so much interests. I am also learning about the poetical tradition in English from the colleague I am working with. We are going to do a reading on Bai Juyi's The Ballad of Eternal Regret or 长恨歌. It is one of my favourite poem from Tang. I agree that historical and literal traditions are key to understand poetry.

[@bridgetphillips7462]

@@dr.gaosclassroom It's sounds as though you are a kindred spirit. 😊
I will look up the poem you mentioned. While I have studied more classic English literature in general, than poetry, if there is anything I can do to help your journey into English works, please feel free to reach out.

[@Jimserac]

Many thanks for this ! I am a retired Acupuncture/Oriental Medicine physician. The time has come to learn Chinese, both the. modern form and the classical. Your videos are of great value in this endeavor.

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

Thanks for your support!! It is so lovely to hear from a TCM physician. I would love to hear from you about your understanding of Taoist philosophy and its connection with acupuncture and herbal medicine. I am planning to talk a bit about that in the future. It would be great if you can keep on watch my videos and give me feedbacks. Thank you so much!!!

[@Jimserac]

@@dr.gaosclassroom I am just starting to investigate Taoism. It is a vast subject and encompasses Acupuncture and Herbal medicine as well.
Curiously, I come at it from a different direction. I come across Taoism as I was reading the novels of the popular Hong Kong Wu Xia writer Jin Yong.
All Chinese seem to know about him but I learned of him only a few weeks ago. His output is incredible and my goal is to be able to read his novels in Chinese.
Regretfully, as I am told that Classical Chinese is as different from Modern Chinese as Latin is from Italian, I must wait before approaching this and must regard it as a different language, even though it uses the same characters as Chinese.
The problem in investigating these topics is that there was a period of radical revisionism after Chairman Mao which discarded many key elements of philosophy and medicine. This was a great stumbling block for me in learning Acupuncture, having used books such as Deadman's Acupuncture and being misled by being told to read books such as "Grasping the Wind" and "The Web That Has no Weaver", both books nearly worthless in their distortion and mytholization of genuine Traditional Chinese medicine whose aspects can only be understood by reading books unpolluted by the intellectual subversion of the 1960's.
So, for Acupuncture, the book "Chinese Acupuncture" by Charles Soulie DeMorant (originally in French L' Acuponcture Chinoise and somewhat bowderlized in its English Translation from Paradigm Publishers) is key but best is to learn Classical Chinese and read the well known classics.
Morant was taught by experts from the Beijing Imperial college in the early 1900's.
Regarding Li Bai I have heard much about him and hope to hear and enjoy some of his poems in the future. Particularly useful is your readings and explanations. I hope I find someone like you who can read passages from Jin Yong's novel while explaining (in English) some of the history and allusions in them.
Sorry to be so long winded ! Again, Thanks.
J.

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

@@Jimserac I am so glad that you find my video helpful. Maybe I should do a video on Jin Yong. I also read many of his novels during my undergraduate years. His novel is a mixture of modern Chinese and Classical Chinese. I wonder if you are learning simplified Chinese or Classical Chinese characters. If you would like to read it with me, there is a small fee for each session and it is negotiable if you are retired. What I do is to get my student to try to read a paragraph by themselves and translate them into English, then I would read with them to explain any culturally or linguistically significant parts in it. Reading the classical medical texts is much harder. However, Classical Chinese follows very strict rules and once you learned the rules, it is much easier to follow. Many sinologists claim that Classical Chinese is easier than many Chinese because of the simpler grammar. I taught I former PhD to read Classical Chinese for about a year and she can read philosophical texts like Change Tzu and Huai nan zi by herself. We had weekly two hour sessions for that. It was not that difficult. I hope you find my video enjoyable. If you have any suggestions for video topics, please don't hesitate to let me know. I would do my best to help.

[@Jimserac]

@@dr.gaosclassroom I'm learning using the Traditional Chinese Characters. I regard the Simplified characters as a useful shorthand, nothing more. For me, for example, the correct character for "Wind" (Feng) is the character for "Insect" inside an enclosure. The. Simplified character is just an "x" inside the enclosure. Much faster to write but it destroys the poetic mental imagery of a tiny insect being tossed about by the wind !! I already know many of the traditional Chinese characters because I learned some Japanese in the 1980's and they use the same characters, mostly.
I may take you up on your offer in about six months. That's how long it will take me to get through the 50 lessons of the best Chinese learning book I could find, "Elementary Chinese" by Stanford Professor Shau Ying Chen, published in the early 1950's. He also has a brilliant book on "Reading Chinese for Beginners".
Many thanks and again, keep posting your excellent presentations. China has a great culture, much of it unknown to the world because of the language and characters, but now, because of the Internet, the doors are opening to its history and vast culture.
J.

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

@@Jimserac Sounds great. I totally agree with you about the classical characters. I learned to read classical character by reading novels published before the 1950s. They certainly carries far more cultural significance and aesthetically more attractive!!

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

Wonderful to get the second video up!!

[@SeenaMusic]

Thank you Dr. Gao ❤️🙏 This is great! So glad you made this channel. I will email you later this year to study with you for sure🙏

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

Hi, Seena. Thank you so much for your encouragement. I am so glad that you find my channel valuable to you. I would be very happy to study more poetry with you!!

[@melaniehyatt3646]

I've just discovered your channel. Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge. You are teaching me new things about Chinese culture and history.

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

I am very happy that you enjoy my videos. Thank you for your support!!

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

Thanks to Taurant Nguyen's comment on my video I realise that Li Po's Thoughts of a Quiet Night or 静夜思 can be read in Vietnamese. I wonder if it can be read in Korean and Japanese. If anyone would like show us how this poem is read in Korean or Japanese, please post an audio clip here. I would love to hear how it was read in Korean or Japanese. I kind of know how it is read in Cantonese, but it would also be great if anyone who can read it in other dialects from China. 😍😍🤩🤩

[@karmatrinleyeshe]

This is great! Would love to study more!

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

Thank you! Let me know if you would like to have any particular poems presented in my future videos!!😀😀

[@dreyasilk8586]

Thank God i came across this lol

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

It is so nice to have people like you sharing the same passion for classic Chinese poetry with me! Thank you. I'll see you around.

[@taurantnguyen1664]

Allow me to post Sino-Vietnamese version that followed Middle Chinese pronunciation
Tĩnh dạ tứ / 靜夜思
Sàng tiền minh nguyệt quang, nghi thị địa thượng *sương*
Cử đầu vọng minh nguyệt, đê đầu tư cố *hương*
Rhymed: sương, hương
霜 Middle Chinese: /ʃɨɐŋ/ Old Chinese (Baxter-Sagart): /*[s]raŋ/ (Zhengzhang): /*sraŋ/ & 鄉 Middle Chinese: /hɨɐŋ/ Old Chinese (Baxter-Sagart): /*qʰaŋ/ (Zhengzhang): /*qʰaŋ/

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

Thanks a lot Taurant. It is a pity I can't read the pronouciation you presented here. I wonder if it would be possible for you to pose a audio clip of reading it in Vietnamese. That would be wonderful for everyone to appreciate Li Po in different languages.

[@ChrisJohnson-mv7jo]

Great stuff!

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

Thank you.

[@mariadioga9585]

Boa tarde,conhecio o poeta por Li Po,como gosto

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

Thank you! Would you like to tell me what this your language? Is it Spanish? Let me know if I guessed wrong.

[@goatscream8345]

Very nice video! What is the most accurate translation of Li Bai's poems you can buy in physical book format?

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

I am not sure about this but I'll ask my collaborator Dr. David Musgrave. He knows more about translation. I'll let you know once I find out.

[@goatscream8345]

@@dr.gaosclassroom Thanks a lot!

[@jiancai_nocturne]

[ 唐朝李白问题及处理意见 ] ----- Jian Cai, Dec.31, 2023, in Canada
太后面首 继父玄宗
一诗没写 文史除名

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

Thank you.

[@jiancai_nocturne]

@@dr.gaosclassroom 李白 是 清孝装太后李玉兰.

[@Esraamhmdjv]

Hello Dr.Gao, is it possible to learn chinese by pin yin without chinese characters?

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

I am afraid it would not be possible to learn Chinese without learning the characters. Street signs, restaurant menu, are all in characters. The other factor is that there are a lot of different dialects in China and Chinese communities around the world. Sometimes they can communicate with each other by writing down the characters when they can's understand each other's dialects. Sorry to disappoint you but I think you deserve the truth. Hope I did not push you away from learning Chinese. Wish you the very best for this dragon year!!

[@jiancai_nocturne]

李白 是 清孝装太后李玉兰.

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

I am not sure what you mean. Li Bai was a Tang Dynasty poet and was born nearly a thousand years before the Qing Dynasty was established.