China:The Glorious Tang And Song Dynasties - Asian Art Museum ...

The poem describes the performance of a dancing girl from Sogdiana, which was a state in
Central Asia. The poet is impressed by the dynamic movements of the girl, who spins according to
the rhythm of drum sound. The poet enjoys her excellent performance and greatly praises her dancing
skills. However, the poet also laments, perhaps with compassion or simply with native pride,
that the girl is not in the right place to sell her skill because the dance is already so familiar to the
Chinese. In his opinion, many Chinese dancers could dance just as well as, if not better than, the
Sogdiana girl!
3. SONG POETRY
The achievements of Song poetry were as great as those of Tang. The Song dynasty actually produced
more poets and more poems than the Tang because of the general expansion of literacy at
that time. Song poets admired the excellence of Tang poetry, while at the same time Song poets
explored directions which were ignored by their Tang predecessors. In contrast to the Tang, Song
poets narrated more details of their daily lives, exhibited a deeper sense of social and political
involvement, and enthusiastically discussed philosophy in their poems.
The concerns of daily life: “Children” by Su Shi
Unlike Tang society, the Song people lived under a weak dynasty whose borders were threatened,
and political life was full of partisan strife. Consequently, society adopted a more defensive outlook
regarding foreign ideas and frontiers, turning inward and taking a more cautious approach to unbridled
emotion. Reflecting this inclination, Song poets were fond of observing their environment no
matter how trivial and routine it might appear. They consciously examined their daily lives and they
believed that routine details deserved to be noticed. Song poets sincerely embraced many mundane
matters as appropriate themes in poetry, expressing feelings closer to home than those of the Tang
poets. A good example is the poem “Children” of Su Shi.
Su Shi (1037–1101; also known by literary name Su Dongpo) is considered by many to be the
greatest of the Song poets. He was born in a famous literati family at Meishan, Sichuan. Like most
other Song elites, he passed the civil service exam and started a career in politics. However, his
major achievements were in liberal arts. He established himself as a painter, calligrapher, essayist,
and above all a poet. In total, he wrote about 2,700 poems. Like his Tang predecessor Li Bo, he was
a person endowed with an innate freedom of spirit; he was also fond of wine, though he was not as
prolific as his Tang predecessor in its consumption. He was also very interested in Chan (later
known in Japan as Zen) meditation. However, the following poem shows that even though Su Shi
was spiritual, free person, he also was attentive to daily life.
21