Is he ill or has he really gone to Bulgaria on his paid vacation, being befriended by black bears in the mountains？
I was indeed in Bulgaria but had to come home early.
Beautiful poetry @kaixin
I particularly liked these lines as they inspired memories of catkins floating over the Moores in Lancashire where my friend lived when I was a child. I used to visit there in the summer and we'd see great clouds of fluff riding the breeze from the dandelion catkins shedding their seeds :)
When swallows pass
Over blue water that surrounds the garden wall.
Most willow catkins have been blown away
This poem should be written by Su Shi when he was young. It portrayed a charming spring-summer landscape, running over with the sence of optimism and fancy-free youth.
You're right, that is exactly the feeling I got from the poem :)
So glad to know you are in Bulgaria now! Have a good time!
Yeah, such a spring scenery is very familiar to me when willow catkins are flying in the air. They look so ethereal like a dream. Willow catkin is a classical wording in ancient Chinese poetry and we can often find it in other poems. In my hometown there are also dandelions which I always love, but it seems that they haven't been chosen by poets luckily, failing to walk into the ancient Chinese poems. Whereas I have noticed that there are quite a few English poems on dandelion.
Nobody knows what time Su Shi wrote this poem due to lack of the historical records. But the Chinese expert in that video judges that it must be written in his young age since it is a poem full of joy and youth. Otherwise his concubine couldn't shed tears when she sang it. The only reason is that it is an old song which reminded her of her young time!