China Travel Notes & News

The Pearl of Orient and A Tang Poem The Song of the Pipa Player is a widely known Chinese poem composed by noted Chinese poet Bai Juyi, who lived from 772 to 846 A.D., when the powerful Tang Dynasty reigned China. In this masterly piece of verse Bai wrote about a female flute-player and her heartrending music he chanced on one night at a remote spot on the Yangtze River. At one point in the poem, Bai thus described the music he heard: "The large strings hummed like rain, The small strings whispered like a secret, Hummed, whispered - and then were intermingled Like a pouring of large and small pearls into a plate of jade." (Translated by Witter Bynner. In The Jade Mountain: A Chinese Anthology, New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1929) The last line in the quotation, "like a pouring of large and small pearls into a plate of jade," was one of the most memorable in all Chinese poetry, which, many centuries after Bai’s time, also became the architectural inspiration for what is known as the Pearl of Orient in Shanghai – the Shanghai Television Tower. Complete in 1994, the Pearl of Orient stands in the newly developed Pudong section of Shanghai. The tower measures 468 meters (1,535 feet) in height, and is of a design that features a series of spheres, large and small, both along the vertical line created by the tower and at the base of the tower, which together recreate the imagery thought up by the poet Bai Juyi many centuries before. In that sense, the Pearl of Orient nicely combines update-to-date modern technology and an age-old culture. Back to China Notes and News