Wine and Celebrities

The union between wine and poetry has a long history. Serving as obvious cases in point are the famous lines by great Tang poet Du Fu praising Li Bai, (.e. `Li Bai can compose a hundred poems with one goblet of wine', 'when can we review poems again/with a goblet of wine at hand? , and 'with an agile mind, he has composed hundreds of poems/drifting all over, he has but one wine goblet`), and Ouyang Xiu's famous quotation that 'I enjoy the views of the sky, the ground, the mountains and the rivers, all because of wine'. This has revealed to us a truth that, being a product of water and fire (the combination of two extremes and the approach of moderation have brought about a wonderful result - a masterpiece by mankind), wine can bring people joy and enable people to get a keener feeling of the nature of humanity and the essence of life.Since ancient times, at home and abroad, numerous poets have been inspired by wine so that they open their minds and spread the wings of their imagination; and numerous poems, essays, and calligraphic works, being created in a state of intoxication, acquire a usual charm because of the spontaneous expression of feelings and the perfect incorporation of form and spirit. Slight intoxication and the arrival of inspiration tend to give the artists similar feelings; the feelings generated by wine and inspiration are like twins, who can not be distinguished from each other though essentially different. When an inspiration comes, the artist is plunged into a state of 'delirious ecstasy': the torrents of his emotions find vent and surge forth; his imagination soars; and images keep surfacing in his active mind. Then for a moment, he becomes unaware of the self and the outside world, feels as if he had transcended the bounds of time and space and broken free of the chains of the desires for fame and gains, and reaches an elevated level of aesthetic appreciation. The green vines painted by Xu Wei after he was drunk and the poems composed by Su Shi after he was intoxicated are all artistic masterpieces, which should invariably be attributed to wine! Through all ages, poets and scholars often want to compose poems after they are drunk and desire wine when they conduct literary creation. In poems, we see wine and from wine come inspirations for poems, to wit: 'raising a cup, I invite the moon to drink' by Li Bai, 'with a goblet of wine in hand, I ask the azure sky' by Su Dongpo, our talk on poetry may last overnights; and we are drunk morning after morning by Du Zimei, and 'I pay tribute to the river with wine goblet in hand, and the surges in my mind rise higher than the waves' by Mao Zedong. All these lines fully demonstrate that wine can give wings to poets' imagination.

Similarly, wine is an effective and powerful catalyst to calligraphers and painters. It is said that Wu Daozi, known as 'painter of all painters', carouse every time he wants to paint'. Once Emperor Ming of the Tang Dynasty ordered him to draw a painting of the 300-kilometer-long Jialing River, he applied brushes to the paper in intoxication and finished the painting within one day. Wang Xizhi completed his most important calligraphic work Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection when he was drunk, and after he sobered up, he 'composed dozens more, all of which fail to reach the notch'. Huaisu, Tang calligrapher and monk, poured ink over paper in intoxication and created the wonderful calligraphic work Autobiography. Zhang Xu, 'master of incursive script', who 'will not apply the brush to paper until he is on a gag and keeps running about, also calligraphed Four Ancient Poems in complete intoxication.