李白是谁？
Who was Li Bai? China’s poet of the moon
Name: ________________ Date: ________
在中国，很多孩子会背的第一首诗，都是同一首：
床前明月光，疑是地上霜。举头望明月，低头思故乡。
这首诗叫《静夜思》，一共只有二十个字：夜里睡不着，看见床前的月光，还以为是地上落了一层霜；抬头看看月亮，又低头想起了远方的家。它的作者，就是唐朝诗人李白。
有意思的是，你在日本课本里读到的版本不太一样，是“床前看月光”和“举头望山月”。宋朝留下来的李白诗集里，也是这样写的。我们今天熟悉的“明月”，大概是明清时期的人改出来的。一首诗流传了一千多年，连字都悄悄变了，可人们对它的喜爱一点儿也没变。
李白生于公元701年，一般认为他出生在中亚，小时候跟着家人搬到了今天的四川。他年轻时读书、练剑，二十多岁就离开家乡，到处游历。据说他到了长安以后，老诗人贺知章读了他的诗，非常吃惊，称他为“谪仙人”，意思是从天上被贬到人间的神仙。
后来，唐玄宗请他进宫，在翰林院做事。民间流传着很多他在宫里的故事：比如有一次他喝醉了，竟然让皇帝身边最有权力的宦官高力士给他脱靴子。这些故事未必全是真的，但李白狂放、不愿低头的性格，确实让他在宫里待不长。不到两年，他就离开了长安，继续四处漂泊。
公元744年，李白遇见了比他小十一岁的杜甫，两人成了好朋友，一起喝酒写诗。今天，他们被看作中国最伟大的两位诗人，一个叫“诗仙”，一个叫“诗圣”。
李白的最后几年过得并不顺利。安史之乱的时候，他因为加入了永王的队伍，被关进监狱，差点儿被处死，后来被流放到很远的夜郎，走到半路才遇到大赦。公元762年，他在当涂去世。民间还有一个美丽的传说：李白喝醉了酒，在船上伸手去捞水里的月亮，结果掉进江里，再也没有回来。
李白一生留下了大约一千首诗。他写酒，写山水，写朋友，但写得最多的，也许还是月亮。所以，下次你抬头看见明月的时候，也可以念一句：“举头望明月，低头思故乡。”
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 同一 | tóngyì | same; identical |
| 低头 | dītóu | to lower one's head |
| 故乡 | gùxiāng | hometown; native place |
| 诗 | shī | poem; poetry; verse |
| 诗人 | shīrén | poet |
| 时期 | shíqī | period; time; era |
| 流传 | liúchuán | to spread; to circulate; to hand down |
| 悄悄 | qiāoqiāo | quietly; secretly |
| 据说 | jùshuō | it is said; reportedly |
| 称 | chēng | to state; to say |
| 天上 | tiānshàng | in the sky; in heaven |
| 四处 | sìchù | everywhere; all around |
English (for the teacher)
In China, the first poem a great many children learn by heart is the same one:
Before my bed the bright moonlight; I took it for frost upon the ground. I raise my head to gaze at the bright moon, and lower it to think of home.
The poem is called Quiet Night Thought and has only twenty characters in all: unable to sleep at night, you see moonlight before your bed and take it for a layer of frost on the ground; you look up at the moon, then lower your head and remember your home far away. Its author is the Tang dynasty poet Li Bai.
Interestingly, the version you read in Japanese textbooks is a little different: “Before my bed I watch the moonlight” and “I raise my head to gaze at the mountain moon”. The collections of Li Bai’s poems that survive from the Song dynasty read the same way. The “bright moon” we know today was probably a change made in the Ming and Qing. Over more than a thousand years even the poem’s words quietly changed, but people’s love for it hasn’t changed at all.
Li Bai was born in 701 AD, generally thought to be in Central Asia, and as a child moved with his family to what is now Sichuan. As a young man he studied and practised the sword, and in his twenties he left home to wander far and wide. It is said that when he reached Chang’an, the old poet He Zhizhang read his poems in astonishment and called him a “banished immortal”, a god sent down from heaven to the human world.
Later Emperor Xuanzong invited him to court to work at the Hanlin Academy. Plenty of stories are told about his time at the palace: once, they say, he got drunk and had Gao Lishi, the most powerful eunuch at the emperor’s side, pull off his boots for him. These stories may not all be true, but Li Bai’s wild nature and refusal to bow his head really did mean he couldn’t stay at court for long. In less than two years he left Chang’an and went back to roaming.
In 744 Li Bai met Du Fu, eleven years his junior, and the two became good friends, drinking and writing poems together. Today they are seen as China’s two greatest poets: one is called the Immortal of Poetry, the other the Sage of Poetry.
Li Bai’s last years were not easy. During the An Lushan rebellion he joined the forces of Prince Yong, was thrown into prison and nearly executed, then was exiled to distant Yelang, and was pardoned only halfway there. He died in Dangtu in 762. There is also a beautiful legend that Li Bai, drunk on a boat, reached out to scoop up the moon in the water, fell into the river and never came back.
Li Bai left about a thousand poems. He wrote about wine, mountains and rivers, and friends, but what he wrote about most was perhaps the moon. So next time you look up and see a bright moon, you can say a line of it too: “I raise my head to gaze at the bright moon, and lower it to think of home.”