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Qi Ji (Wade-Giles name: Ch'i Chi) | |
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QI JI (861-935) Qi Ji was a monk poet. He was born in Yiyang, Hunan, but was orphaned when he was seven, and so entered a Buddhist monastery, where he worked herding cattle and showed an early talent for poetry (he was said as a youth to have scratched his poems on the backs of cattle with a bamboo stick). He traveled widely, eventually gaining the patronage of the king of Nanping, who gave him a position of influence in a monastery. ___________________ An Early Plum Flower ---Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping ___________________ Note: The following teaching story is told
about this poem: When Zhen Gu was at Yuanzhou,
Qi Ji visited him and presented his poems.
Speaking of the lines from his poem "An Early
Plum Flower" "Deep snow in the next village. /
Several branches blossomed last night," Zhen Gu
commented: if "several branches" have bloomed,
they are not "early" blossoms, so it's better to
say "one branch." At this, Qi Ji saluted him as
a teacher. After that Chinese scholars refer to
Zhen Gu as "One Word Master" (See The Art of
Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters.
Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1996.
Translated, edited and with introductions by
Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping, pp. 53-54).
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