Tomb of Bai Juyi

The tomb of Bai Juyi, one of the Tang dynasty's most beloved poets, sits on the eastern bank of the Yi River about a kilometre from the main grottoes entrance. Bai Juyi (772–846) spent his final decades in Luoyang and chose to be buried here, beside the gorge he admired. The tomb complex, known as Bai Yuan, is a peaceful garden with steles inscribed with his poems and a modest mound marking the actual burial site.

Bai Juyi is unusual among Tang poets in that his verse was deliberately accessible — he reportedly tested new poems on an illiterate old woman, and if she couldn't understand them, he rewrote them. His poems about ordinary life, natural beauty, and the dignified sorrows of middle age have been popular in China and Japan for twelve centuries. Coming here from the grottoes, you move from the imperial ambitions of the Tang state to the private life of one of its most human voices; the contrast is instructive.

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A story
Bai Juyi spent the last years of his life in Luoyang, where he called himself the "Hermit of the Fragrant Mountain" and presided over a literary club of elderly gentlemen who drank, composed poetry, and ranked themselves by age. He specified that he wanted to be buried beside Longmen rather than in his home province, drawn by the scenery and the Buddhist associations of the gorge. His tomb has been a pilgrimage site for scholars and poets ever since.

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