1、Li Bai (ca 705 - 762),also called Li Po,is probably China's most famous poet.A great deal has been written about him.This commentary focuses on his connection to the qin.In this regard Ronald Egan writes (Controversy,p.53),"In the first centuries of the Tang dynasty,the poets Meng Haoran and Li Bo further promoted the cultivation of a special literati affiliation with this instrument." 2Li Bai(701-762) is regarded as the greatest romantic poet of the Tang dynasty(618-907) and of China of all times.Born in Central Asia,as it is believed,he moved with his family to Sichuan at the age of five.In 725,he traveled down the Changjiang(Yangzi) River when he wrote The Moon over the Eyebrow Mountains and Farewell beyond the Thorn-Gate Gorge,in which both the moon and water are personified.and which reveal his deep love of nature as well as of his native land.In 727,he was married to the granddaughter of an ex-minister Xu.In 730,he came to Chang'an,the Tang capital,in the hope of meeting people of influence who would help him to realize his poltical ideal.Disappointed,he wrote Lovesickness in which he compared his yearning to the love for a woman.Hard Is the Way of the World and Hard Is the Road to Shu which is supposed to be his most important work in the first period of his verse-making.In 735,he wrote Invitation to Wine in which he revealed his love of drink was due to his disappointment in his career.After the death of his first wife,he move with his children to East Lu(present-day Shangdong Province).Famed for his poetry,he was summoned to the capital in 742 to write poems and songs for the emperor and his favorite mistress of which the best-known are the three stanzas on The Beatufiful Lady Yang.In 744,he left Chang'an for Luoyang where he met Du Fu and a warm friendship and exchange of poems began that lasted lifelong.In 746,he traveled in the south and wrote Mount Skyland Ascended in a Dream which,according to S.Obata,might rival Coleridge's Kubla Khan in its transcendent beauty and imaginative power,but which was written more than one thousand years earlier.In 753,he visited Xuan-cheng(in present-day Anhui Province) and wrote many poems in the pavilion of Xia Tiao.In 755,An Lushan raised the standard of rebellion,and Li Bai was called to join the loyal forces led by Prince Yong in an attempt to resist the rebels.His political aspirations revived and he wrote this Songs of Eastern Expedition of Prince Yong.When the prince was defeated,he was banished to Ye-lang(in present-day Guizhou Province) until an amnesty(大赦）was declared in 759.When he regained his liberty,he wrote his joyful quatrain Leaving the White Emperor Town for Jiangling.In 760,the revisited the Lu Mountains(in present-day Jiangxi Province) and wrote the Song of Mount Lu which manifests his conversion to Taoism.In 762,he died at the age of sixty-two,chanting his last poem "On Death bed".