Cirrus@Austlit

Author's note: I was told, and half-believed, that everything worth saying about the Chines had been said by the poets of the Tang and Song dynasties, and much of that had been shaped by Tao Yuan Ming four centuries before. I was lucky enough to be able to spend every Friday afternoon for two years with the distinguished scholar Tan Shilin, who supplied the translations which I turned into English poems with much discussion, then after with his students, Zhan Qiao and Liang Rui-Qing.