This book was published not only as a catalogue for the great exhibition "Splendors of Imperial China", also as a collection of excellent articles by leading scholars in the field of Chinese art and cultural history. Some of the most precious items selected for the exhibition eventually were not able to make it to the United States, nontheless they are included in the book(now you get a chance to see them on the paper.) The authors cleverly extended a study of visual artifacts to a colorful (though not complete) portraiture of the cultural evolution in China. This task is not easy, considering the fact that the imperial collection on which the National Palace Museum is based on was, for a large part, a reflection of the personal taste of the Ch'ien-lung emperor. For example, you will not find any significant piece of sculpture or wood-block prints in this book. On the other hand, the selection of paintings and ceramics (especially the Ju wares) are just superb. The only problem is its size, which prevents you bringing it around to show off the beatiful pictures in it. Still, it is a must-have reference for any serious readers who want to know more about Chinese visual culture

Li Po (AD 701 - 762) and Tu Fu (AD 712 - 770) are regarded as the two greatest Chinese poets. Li Po was a spiritual poet whose verse deals with consciousness and the human mind, whilst Tu Fu was a chronicler of the everyday life. The book includes a thorough introduction encompassing the pronunciation of Chinese words and names, notes on the Chinese calligraphy and the introduction proper which provides information on the poets and their times, plus backgrounds to T'ang Poetry and the principles of Chinese syllabic metre. The poems are elucidated with explanatory notes and with reference to Ezra Pound's translations in his book Cathay. In this regard, I found here another translation of Li Po's poem The Ballad Of Ch'ang-Kan (The Sailor's Wife) the first part of which was translated as The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter, by Pound. This is a beautiful poem and I was very pleased to find the second part here. Although there is no unanimity amongst scholars that it really is by Li Po, it perfectly completes the first part and Cooper's notes here are very illuminating, especially as regards place names on the Yangtse river. This excellent book concludes with a list of titles and an index of first lines, including poems by other poets in the introduction.

I am not giving the stars to the translation or the edition. This is the only book on Li Po I could find available a few months ago. I guess I was lucky enough to run into an old edition of Li Po's poetry at my University library years ago, and had been looking for a copy since then. Got this. Want more.

LI PO AND TU FU : Poems Selected and Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Arthur Cooper. Chinese Calligraphy by Shui Chien-tung. (Penguin Classics). 249 pp. Penguin 1973, and Reissued.

This is a valuable book in many ways. Besides giving a selection of enjoyable translations of China's two greatest poets - Li Po (+ 701-762, 25 poems) and Tu Fu (+ 712-770, 18 poems), it also includes a remarkably full and informative Introduction of almost 100 pages which not only serves to introduce beginners to the subject of Chinese poetry, and to the work of Li Po and Tu Fu in particular, but which could also be read with profit by others.

Each of the 43 poems is followed by an explanatory comment, which can range in length from paragraph to essay form. The book also includes a Guide to the Pronunciation of Chinese Words and Names, and, since twelve of the poems are accompanied by the Chinese text in the striking calligraphy of Shui Chien-tung, a Note on Chinese Calligraphy has been provided by the artist for the benefit of those who may not be familiar with the nature and history of this fascinating art form.

Shui Chien-tung has "adopted a manner influenced by Chinese bronze inscriptions [and] has also followed various styles of writing to suit the different poems" (pp.13-14). The result is a clear style which in most cases will cause no problems for anyone who may be studying Chinese characters, since the structure of even the more complex characters can easily be discerned.

Here, as an example of Cooper's style (with my obliques added to indicate line breaks), is the first of two 'sonnets' of Tu Fu's 'At an Evening Picnic, with Young Bucks and Beauties' :

"Sunset's the time to take the boat out / When a light breeze raises slow ripples, / Bamboo-hidden is the picnic place / And lotus-fresh in the evening cool; // But while the bucks are mixing iced drinks / And beauties snow a lotus salad, / A slip of cloud comes black overhead : / Before it rains my sonnet must end !" (p.163)

Cooper's reading nicely evokes the lighthearted amusements of spoiled and wealthy youth, out on the cool water with a party of singing girls for an evening of companionship and pleasure after the heat of the day.

Cooper's anthology has an excellent Introduction, is of manageable size, well-translated, helpfully annotated, uniquely illustrated with Shui Chien-tung's calligraphy, and has other useful features. It would make a good introduction for anyone new to Chinese poetry, and it can also be read with interest by anyone wishing to extend their knowledge of Li Po and Tu Fu.

Those who, after reading it, would like to explore further and learn about some of China's other great writers, might take a look at the excellent anthology by Cyril Birch, another book I can strongly recommend:

ANTHOLOGY OF CHINESE LITERATURE : From early times to the fourteenth century. Compiled and edited by Cyril Birch. Associate editor Donald Keene. 492 pp. New York : Grove Press, 1965, and Reissued.

Someone, quite mistakenly, once asked me about John Harrell, saying "Isn't he the guy who writes all those pro-Vietnam war poems." It's amazing how people don't listen closely enough sometimes- it's a mad assumption that a writer would be "pro-war" simply for portraying war for what the terrifying travesty that it is, and for portraying soldiers in their writing as living people, instead of as the killing machines we who protest violence would sometimes like to see them as. Harrell brings a wealth of humanity to his view of the Vietnam War- particularly in his book, "Twenty Years". Harrell's soldiers are torn-up both emotionally and physically, scarred- in many cases, irreparably, from a horror they were ill-equipped to face. This is no idle supposition of what war must have been like. Instead, it's based on the poets on experiences as a medic during the war. For example, in "The Lieutenant," Harrell traces the path of a bullet through the fallen soldier's body, mapping it's path through every organ and major bone. The gruesome description is then balanced by the flat image of the soldier, lying in a hospital bed, being tossed a purple heart by an apathetic general. This is admirable work, worthy of close inspection.

John Harrell broke into the 'published poet's' world with his humanely biased view of the consequences of war. This work shows us the same kind of heartfelt images cast in cadences and phrases that are reminiscent of both Chinese and Japanese traditional poetry... pointed yet muted by thoughtfulness and fond memories. A calming breeze amidst the turmoil of the sensationalism too often found in contemporary poetry.

Anything written from the Zhuangzi/Daoist point of view, from Lin Yutang's 'Moment in Peking' on down the sadly short list, shows an entirely different portrait of China than we are used to seeing. Amid the conformity, an eccentric; amid the tradition, a progressive; amid the acquiescence, a rebel; amid the herd, an individual. The tide never has, and probably never will, turn, but it is nice to know that there will always be those willing to swim joyously against it.

Li Po, or Li Bai as he is called in standard Mandarin, is one of those rare such characters in Chinese history, and Simon Elegant brings him convincingly to life, a man of flesh and blood and spirit.

I know little of Li Bai; here in China he is much memorialized but less remembered, so the tales in "Floating Life" are as much as I know about the mythology beyond the repute of the poems. I'm sure Elegant did his research, though, and it makes for an engaging tale.

The device of the acolyte/narrator is awkward at times, and the breaks away from Li Bai's voice cause the book's progression to stumble, but it does allow the tale to be told in first person and without overly rigorous chronology. Li Bai's tales, told through his perspective, witty and insightful, are what make the book.

And the book does justice to Li Bai's poetry and ethic. Reading it, one gets lost in the quiet moment, as if downing a bowl of warm Huangjiu in a boat on the West Lake at dusk. Simple, sublime. Li Bai did many things, and is enshrined in the catacombs of history, but what matters is that he knew how to be happy, how to live in the moment.

Simon Elegant's telling of the itinerant poet, Li Po's life, is a wonderfully told story. The larger than life Byronic overtones of Li Po's adventures serve to highlight the poetry which is liberally interspersed with his life's tale. The poetry, as a result, takes on a relevance missing in strict anthologies. While it is true that the story lacks some character development, this is not a book intended to be the last word on Li Po's life. However,"A Floating Life" is a terrific place to start one's own journey into the world of chinese poetry and literature.

Elegant stay fairly close to the historical facts, such facts as can be distinguished from many legends, in telling the life of the great poet and Taoist Li Po. Li tells the story in this novel to a young boy, Wang Lung. The story is fun, and is the same sort of mixture of truth and myth that Li himself probably would have used had he really written an autobiography. There are numerous intriguing and believable details about the daily lives of people at various social levels, from the Imperial Court to poverty, in T'ang China.

The main weakenss in the book for me was that only Li Po really emerges as a character. The others who show up, either in the story of Li recounting his life while going into exile or in the story of Li's life, are poorly developed. Elegant works several poems by Li into the text, but I would have liked to see more.

I recommend it on the whole, for the charm of the story and of the poems translated in it, but I can't do so with real enthusiasm. A better book with some similar material is 'Bridge of Birds' by Hughart.

This book is a well-chosen cross-section of Chinese Zen poetry. It also supplies one of my favorite items in translations of foreign poetry - the original text. The strength of this book is the broad stretch of time covered, as indicated by the organization of the index: pre-T'ang dynasty, T'ang, Sun, Yuan, Ming, Ch'ing. This breadth also means, however, that not all the poetry is of the quality one find's in more focused collections ephasizing the masters Wang Wei, Han Shan, Li Po... Several of these collections appear as "selected sources" in this book.

My favorite in this volume is The Flow and Seed Sequence, a series seven poems written by the Zen Patriarchs beginning with Bodhidharma (d. 536) with poems added to the series nearly 2 centuries later. The translations do an excellent job of retaining the concrete imagery typical of Zen poetry e.g. from Liu Chang Ching "All along the trail of moss, / I follower your wooden shoeprints". We find inventive descriptions of concret images in Liu Fang-Ping "The Big Dipper slopes; / the Great Bear bends down". There are also unusual mentions of doubt from Wang An Shih "Often I doubt the Buddhist way, / that nothing truly exists".

Despite its many good attributes, this collection failed my ultimate test: rarely was I enticed to read and reread a poem. I would still recommend A Drifting Boat or Cold Mountain first. But to even be worthy of comparison to those volumes is strong praise.

A wonderful book, but seemed oriented (ha-ha)toward painting and ceramics. I would have liked to see more examples of jade and ivory carvings, as well as textiles.

This exhibition catalogue is a must have item for anyone who has a serious interest in China's rich textual tradition. I have already put Visible Traces on my Christmas wish list in hopes that my relatives, who have no idea why I have been studying Chinese literature and history all these years, will break down and give me something related to my life's work. And I haven't written a wish list in ages, that's how much I want a copy of this on my bookshelf. And if they don't give me a copy, I'll give one to myself as a gift once I finish my PhD.

If you didn't have an opportunity to see these rare books, maps and artefacts when they were on display in New York or Los Angeles, or if you don't feel like buying a plane ticket to visit the National Library of China in Beijing, this catalogue is an economical way to savor what you missed. The editorial review does a wonderful job of summarizing the contents, so I won't repeat that. The color photography certainly does justice to the original works. I enjoyed seeing the photographs of a 1621 manuscript on Tang poetry because it's connected to my own research, but there is something in this volume for anyone who loves Chinese culture. The reader will find scrolls of Buddhist sutras, delicate drawings of gentlemen playing the game of go, specialist monographs on the varieties of crysanthemums, illustrated manuals on goldfish, albums of Beijing opera characters, oracle bones, pictorial rubbings and multi-color maps of the Chinese empire, and more.

For the specialist the bibliography is detailed enough to start tracking down other extant copies of the items in the exhibition as well as general information to be found in secondary sources.

That said, why didn't I rate this book a 5? Only a couple reasons. Some sections of maps and charts have been magnified, and are less distinct than their smaller scale originals, which some readers will find frustrating. Every reader will have a different reason why they love this book. I wanted to be able to see the whole 1621 poetry collection. A crysanthemum connoisseur will want to see every flower illustration. Map lovers will wish that all the maps had been printed. In other words, every one will wish the book were bigger and that it covered his or her interest in more detail (even at the expense of someone else's). At 337 pages, however, it's already a large volume. After savoring each page, you may find yourself falling for some new aspect of Chinese culture and you'll realize you may have to buy that plane ticket to China after all. Visible Traces will whet your appetite, but it won't quench your thirst, which is fine because no one volume could ever contain all the glories of China's print culture. DO NOT show this catalogue to your kids, unless you are happy for them to fall in love with Chinese history and art and study for PhDs instead of becoming a lawyer or getting an MBA.

I currently use this book as a basis for teaching a tai-chi class; it is a great book. Though I would argue the validity of some of the information, the basic premis is great - as a moving meditation, tai-chi is an excellent way to maintain a healthy life-style.

Where can my students buy this book since it is out of print?

This book would provide the reader with an exercise system that would, indeed, improve balance and health. This system is based on Tai Chi, but is not Tai Chi. If you're looking for a dance routine no one else knows, this books for you. As far as excercise goes, it would do OK, but because it's not actual Tai Chi, most of the aspects which bring about health are missing. I would strongly recommend Yoga for health if you don't want to learn a martial art. I also feel that to use this book without a solid base in either martial arts or Yoga, one would be risking injury unless a teacher were present (and then you wouldn't need a book :). So, if you're looking for a good book on Tai Chi, look elsewhere.