Tag Archives: poet

少小離家老大回，    

鄉音無改鬢毛衰。

兒童相見不相識，    

笑問客從何處來。

Young, so young, when I left home

Now, so old, I return.

The lilt in their language

Has not changed;

It’s my beard that’s gone grey.

A man I knew when a child

Now smiles, and says :

‘Where are you from,

Stranger?’

The poet who wrote this, He Zhi-Zhang, lived from 659 to 744 in Zhejiang province. He was already famous in his youth for his poems and his big-hearted, broad-minded manner. He drank, joked and disputed with poets of the calibre of Li Bai and Du Fu.

He Zhi-Zhang’s easy-going manner while inebriated was portrayed in Du Fu’s poem entitled Song of the Eight Immortals at Drink.

He Zhi-Zhang was a Taoist and later disappeared into the countryside.