Cai Wenji
蔡文姬
Her poems on exile and return are among the earliest known by a woman in China.
Qi County, Kaifeng
All people
Writers
Poets and essayists whose lines are still memorised in Chinese schools.
8 entries, each linked to a place you can visit.
CA
Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove
竹林七贤
The circle that drank and wrote at the foot of Yuntai Mountain.
Xiuwu, Jiaozuo
Du Fu
杜甫
China's most studied poet was born in Gongyi, on the Yellow River.
Gongyi, Zhengzhou
Han Yu
韩愈
The essayist who argued prose back toward clarity, honoured at his tomb park.
Mengzhou, Jiaozuo
Bai Juyi
白居易
The poet of plain speech, whose lines still travel easily into other languages.
Xinzheng, Zhengzhou
Li Shangyin
李商隐
The most allusive of the late Tang poets, born in Qinyang.
Qinyang, Jiaozuo
Liu Yuxi
刘禹锡
Exiled repeatedly, he wrote some of the Tang's most stubbornly cheerful lines.
Xingyang, Zhengzhou
Li He
李贺
The 'poet ghost' whose images stayed strange for a thousand years.
Yiyang, Luoyang