Six-Lens Poem Reading and the Story Behind It

It Started with Nonsense

A friend sent me this image, calling it an authentic Wu Daozi. I looked and looked and could not spot the forgery. It must be real.

I replied at once:

Nothing wrong here. He was a man of that age. He saw it with his own eyes. Du Mu came later—what is he fantasizing about? Gates opening one after another? Did those gates even need to open? Just because Wu Daozi has some random Cantonese accent, why should posterity refuse him? The tragedy of history.

Joke aside, once that poem came up—Passing the Huaqing Palace, the first of three quatrains—I thought again of this year’s trip to Xi’an. I had given a full day to the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, and never made it to the neighboring Lishan Garden or Huaqing Palace, the very stage of this poem.

长安回望绣成堆，…