Wangchuan ji

The Wangchuan ji is a collection of Tang poetry written by the two poets Wang Wei (王維) and Pei Di (裴迪), also known in other ways, such as Wheel River Collection. The verses are based on a series of twenty scenes, inspired by the sights available at Wang Wei's retirement estate: each one forms the topic for a pair of one five-character quatrains, one by each of the poetic pair, first Wang Wei, then Pei Di. Besides the long-term interest in these verses in China, this anthology has created much interest around the world, including numerous translations, especially Wang's version of "Deer Park". Several complete translations of the whole work have been done, in English. A series of "Twenty Scenes" of Wangchuan were done as a painting series. The Wangchuan poems (and related artworks) form an important part of traditional Chinese Shan shui landscape painting and Shanshui poetry development. There are clear indications of the influence of the Six Dynasties poet early exemplar of landscape genre poetry Xie Lingyun's poems on topics, partly inspired by his family estate, in what is today Zhejiang. The considerable influence of Pei Di and Wang Wei's Wangchuan ji shows in much subsequent painting, music, and poetry. Setting Some of Wang Wei's most famous poetry was done as a series of quatrains written by him to which his friend Pei Di wrote replying double couplets. Together, these form a group titled the Wang River Collection. Note that "Wang" as in the river is a different character that the "Wang" of Wang Wei's name. Wang literally refers to rim or outside part of a wheel, chuan means "river" and ji means a collection. Sometimes, also, these are sometimes referred to as the "Lantian poems", after the real name of Wang's estate's location, in Lantian County. Wang Wei's career as a government official had its ups and downs. One of his early positions was serving in Liangzhou, which then was a term used to refer to the larger area of Wuwei. After completing his service there and returning to the capital city of Chang'an, Wang Wei took the opportunity of his temporary lack of official posting to explore the countryside to the south of the capital, in the Lantian area of the Zhongnan Mountains. As well, Wang Wei then made friends with Pei Di. In 740-741 Wang resumed his successful governmental career, including an inspection tour of Xiangyang, Hubei, and then he held various positions in Chang'an.