JIANG KUI (1155-1221)

Jiang Kui, also known as the White Stone Daoist, came from Boyang, Jiangxi, though his father -- a scholar-official -- moved the family to Hebei when Jiang Kui was a boy. His father died young, so he was raised by his sister and her husband. As a youth, Jiang Kui was a famous prodigy. He was a musician, a critic, and a poet in the Southern Song dynasty and he lived in the areas of Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Huzhou in the lower Yangtze River area. Jiang Kui was not himself successful in finding a career in officialdom, and so lived by selling his calligraphy and relying on patrons. He wrote extremely important works of poetics and notes on ci music and invented seventeen lyric form (ci) tune-patterns. His poems "Hidden Fragrance" and "Sparse Shadows" are two of the best-known and beloved Chinese poems about plum blossoms.
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Dream on the Eve of the Lantern Festival, To the Tune of "Partridge Sky"

The Fei River flows east and never stops.
It was a mistake to have planted the seed of love.
In my dream I saw you, though not as clear as in a painting.
A mountain bird's trill suddenly startled awake in darkness.

The spring is not yet green,
but my hair has already turned into silk.
Apart so long, the pain numbs,
but on each night of the red lotus lanterns,
we know we miss each other from different ends of the earth.

        ---Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping