[Potemkin]

Cheap plots that appeal to the masses

You mean just like Sophocles or Moliere...?

[jessupjonesjnr87]

He was basically a romcom script writer

[Potemkin]

He was basically a romcom script writer

He certainly had an eye on the bottom line, if that's what you mean. He had had his eye on a big house in Stratford ever since he was a kid.... and yes, he eventually bought it with the proceeds of his scribbling. But along the way, he actually did a damn good job of scribbling those crowd-pleasers....

[Godstud]

Wasn't Li Bai a character in the movie Couching Tiger Hidden Dragon?

[Potemkin]

We're talking about the other Li Bai, Godstud. You know, the real one....

[Godstud]

Maybe the movie was based on him? That'd be cool.

[Potemkin]

The dates are wrong. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is set in the 18th century Qing Dynasty, whereas Li Bai lived in the 8th century Tang Dynasty.

[Godstud]

Oh, a minor 1000 year error, on the part of Hollywood, isn't that far-fetched!

[ThirdTerm]

The Tang dynasty was a golden age of cosmopolitan culture in China because its founder was a military commander of part Turkic ancestry as the Li family was of Turkic-Chinese origins. Li Yuan ruled the country in a humane manner emphasising racial equality between different ethnic groups and Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Islam and Nestorianism coexisted peacefully in Chang'an. The Tang era was a period of unprecedented military dominance and Turkic and Central Asian soldiers were conscripted to protect the trade routes, which was similar to the latter phase of the Roman Empire for which German soldiers protected the frontiers on behalf of the Romans. Li Bai was born in present-day Kyrgyzstan and the Tang dynasty's most famous poet was not ethnically Han Chinese, which represented a Turkish takeover of China during the Tang era, and part of the Tang aristocracy was of non-Chinese descent, especially Turkish origin. Moreover, a genetic study (Piazza et al. 2007) found that the Etruscans, who emerged about 1200 BC and provided many of the cultural underpinnings of Roman society, originated in Turkey. The team studied the Y chromosome from males who had been living in selected areas of Tuscany where the Etruscans were known to have concentrated and found that the genetic sequences of the Tuscan men varied significantly from those of men in surrounding regions in Italy, and were most closely related to those of men from Turkey.

The military of the Tang Dynasty was staffed with a large population of Turkic soldiers, referred to as Tujue in Chinese sources. Tang elites in northern China were familiar with Turkic culture, a factor that contributed to the Tang acceptance of Turkic recruits. The Tang emperor Taizong adopted the title of "Heavenly Kaghan" and promoted a cosmopolitan empire. Taizong regularly recruited and promoted military officers of Turkic ancestry, whose steppe experience contributed to the western and northern expansion of the Tang empire. The Turkic general Ashina She'er participated in the Tang capture of the Karakhoja, Karasahr, and Kucha kingdoms in Xinjiang. The half-Turkic general An Lushan started a revolt that led to the decline of Tang Dynasty. The Orkhon inscriptions by the Gokturks were critical of the Turks that had served the Tang Dynasty, and condemned them for helping the Chinese emperor expand his burgeoning empire. The Turkic soldiers stationed by the Chinese in the Tang garrisons of Central Asia settled in the region, spreading Turkic languages in an area that had been predominantly Indo-European.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turks_in_the_Tang_military

Three hypotheses have been proposed on the origin of the distinctive Etruscan civilization and language that flourished ca. 3,000 years before present (BP) in Central Italy: 1) an external Anatolian source (Lydia and Lemnos) as claimed by Herodotus, 2) an autochthonous process of formation from the preceding Villanovan society as firstly proposed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus and 3) an influence from Northern Europe. A synthetic geographical map summarizing 34 classical genetic markers in Italy differentiates a genetically homogeneous. Central Italian region between the Arno and Tiber rivers (ancient Etruria) from the rest of Italy. While this fact was tentatively interpreted as a genetic footprint of the Etruscans, its verification remained a challenge due to lack of data on differentiation of such markers and its calibration with time. Here we show the genetic relationships of modern Etrurians, who mostly settled in Tuscany, with other Italian, Near Eastern and Aegean peoples by comparing the Y-chromosome DNA variation in 1,264 unrelated healthy males from: Tuscany-Italy (n=263), North Italy (n=306), South Balkans (n=359), Lemnos island (n=60), Sicily and Sardinia (n=276). The Tuscany samples were collected in Volterra (n=116), Murlo (n=86) and Casentino Valley (n=61). We found traces of recent Near Eastern gene flow still present in Tuscany, especially in the archaeologically important village of Murlo. The samples from Tuscany show eastern haplogroups E3b1-M78, G2*-P15, J2a1b*-M67 and K2-M70 with frequencies very similar to those observed in Turkey and surrounding areas, but significantly different from those of neighbouring Italian regions. The microsatellite haplotypes associated to these haplogroups allow inference of ancestor lineages for Etruria and Near East whose time to the most recent common ancestors is relatively recent (about 3,500 years BP) and supports a possible non autochthonous post-Neolithic signal associated with the Etruscans.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 9707611069

[benpenguin]

Naaaaa. Li Bai doesn't know kung fu. He is just a John Lennon in Tang Dynasty that likes to compose while drunk, instead of stoned.

[Potemkin]

Naaaaa. Li Bai doesn't know kung fu. He is just a John Lennon in Tang Dynasty that likes to compose while drunk, instead of stoned.

Actually in those days being drunk was pretty much the same as being 'stoned' nowadays. In the earliest cultures, alcohol was regarded not just as a recreational drug (as it is now), but as an entheogenic drug which could grant spiritual insights. The Bacchic rites of ancient Greece, the 'mead of poetry' drunk by Odin, or even the Communion wine in Christianity, is evidence for this sacral, entheogenic quality of alcohol. Li Bai's drunkenness was not merely a squalid self-indulgence, but was (so he seems to have believed) a means of achieving spiritual insight and poetic inspiration.

[benpenguin]

^Yep, thats exactly right. And Li Bai's style has been particularly wild comparing with other mainstream Chinese poets, and it goes well with the "drunk poetry" theme.

[quetzalcoatl]

I enjoy good commie art like Music for Brass Choir by American composer Wallingford Riegger, an actual communist (not a CIA agent like like Lovestone or William Phillips). Also good fascist art, like Celine or D'Annunzio. Also good art by pigs who switched sides, or who didn't give a squat. Riegger, incidentally, died in NY City after being tripped by somebody walking dogs, and then striking his head on the concrete; this could make a good Peter and the Wolf type commie fable, but I haven't had time to fill in the details.

[fuser]

Ben is making Li Bai sound more awesome with every post. Can you even write good poetry without being drunk or stoned?

[benpenguin]

Well not that I am particularly good with Chinese poetry, but most of the Chinese poems that we learn at school are descriptions of natrual scenery with subtle meaning on various topics. Li Bai's ones are no different, but all his poems has a distinctive touch of always being drunk to various degrees and having great parties.

That was actually a very fashionable lifestyle with Chinese aristocrats - making artwork (Like painting, playing music and writing poems), then dance with a sword while being drunk, but Li Bai has been particularly famous of it.

[Potemkin]

Well not that I am particularly good with Chinese poetry, but most of the Chinese poems that we learn at school are descriptions of natrual scenery with subtle meaning on various topics. Li Bai's ones are no different, but all his poems has a distinctive touch of always being drunk to various degrees and having great parties.

Indeed. Unfortunately, the party ended when An Lushan decided that Chang'an could use a makeover....

That was actually a very fashionable lifestyle with Chinese aristocrats - making artwork (Like painting, playing music and writing poems), then dance with a sword while being drunk, but Li Bai has been particularly famous of it.

He was the greatest exponent of that style. Li Bai's greatness doesn't lie in his 'originality' (a rather Western concept), but in the fact that he took an existing tradition and elevated it to its highest pinnacle.

[benpenguin]

Respect, Potemkin, you know Chinese history well!

[Potemkin]

Respect, Potemkin, you know Chinese history well!

Of course. For am I not... Potemkin?

[Fakestinian]

[Potemkin]

^ I feel sure that Li Bai would have approved!