Political Attitudes

During the Golden Era of the Tang Dynasty, the national power of China achieved its peak. Economic prosperity and material affluence resulted in great social orders; the unification of the South and North made it possible for Tang poets to travel across the boundaries and explore the beauty of the country. In particular, the magnificent mountains and rivers provided a rich and inexhaustible source of creation. Even in the later political upheavals, Tang poets did keep their roaming habits and heavily employed elements of mountains and water in poems to express their political attitudes. Due to their different backgrounds and beliefs, however, individual poets might have drastically different interpretations of the views they saw. Here, we will focus on the works of the three most-known Tang poets: Wang Wei, Du Fu, and Li Bai, to get some insights into how these poets efficiently conveyed their political attitudes by using water as a metaphor.