Li Yangbing
Li Yangbing (
Li Yangbing was from Zhaojun, or the Zhao Administrative District, now known as
In the meantime, things had not gone so well for Li Yangbing's close relative, the famous poet and former court favorite, Li Bai; who had recently fallen under political scrutiny, and had narrowly escaped a death sentence. Li Bai was condemned and en route to exile, but was then reprieved – all due to the intervention of leading Tang General
When his famous relative Li Bai arrived in Dangtu, in his skiff, Li Yangbing was the chief magistrate there; although this governmental service was not what his "heart coveted",[1] and nearing retirement. Li Bai, older than Li Yangbing, became progressively sick, to the point of being a bed-ridden invalid. Already near retirement, Li Yangbing visited Li Bai on his death bed, where he was entrusted with the care of Li Bai's hastily scrawled and disorganized poetry manuscripts.
In his retirement, Li Yangbing was able to use his literary and calligraphic talents to prepare the first corpus of collected Li Bai poetry; despite that, according to Li Yangbing, out of the eight years of the An Shi Rebellion turmoil, Li Bai's "Writings of those years were lost, nine out of ten. What are preserved ... are for the most part what I obtained from others."[2] Li Yangbing's diligence in collecting, editing, and publishing Li Bai's poems would eventually lead to the first collected works of Li Bai's poems, with results which would resound through the literary world through the centuries, and which re-echo even through the present day.
See also
- History of the administrative divisions of China
- Classical Chinese poetry
- Ma'anshan
- Provinces in the Tang dynasty
Notes
References
- The New Book of Tang
- The Old Book of Tang
- Obata, Shigeyoshi (1923). The Works of Li Po, the Chinese Poet (J. M. Dent & Co, ). ASIN B000KL7LXI.