江雪
Qiān shān千山niǎo鸟fēi飞jué绝，
mò万jìng径rén人zōng踪miè灭。
gū孤zhōu舟suō蓑lì笠wēng翁，
dú独diào钓hán寒jiāng江xuě雪。
The poet & the story
Liu Zongyuan (773–819) wrote this in bitter political exile in Yongzhou, banished after a failed reform movement. The frozen, emptied landscape is widely read as a self-portrait: a principled man alone in a hostile world, refusing to give up his fishing line.
Interpretation
A thousand mountains, and not one bird flying; ten thousand paths without a human footprint. In that erased world, one old man in a straw cape fishes the cold river snow. The first characters of the four lines hide the message 千萬孤獨 — “utterly alone.” The poem is the classic image of dignified solitude.