Li Po

Poet, warrior, horseman, wanderer and adviser to the Emperor, Li Po is widely regarded as the greatest poet of China's early T'ang Dynasty (7th century A.D.) Speaking through the voice of Li Po and his friends, fellow poet Tu Fu and philosopher Wang Wei, "Li Po" captures the life of a man called "the spirit of freedom walking in a bloody land." In life, Li Po was a lion of a man. When he boasted he could drink 300 cups of wine in one sitting then take on an army with his sword, no one doubted his word. Yet his greatest pleasure was the love of women, in whose company he delighted in writing poems, then watching them float away on a river. Of the thousands of poems Li Po wrote, only a fraction remain. No one knows where Li Po was born, how he died or where he rests today. Legend holds that Li Po drowned late in life while trying to embrace the reflection of the moon in the Yellow River.