The Golden Year of Fan Cheng-ta

Eight centuries divide us from Fan Cheng-ta, but across this gap of time his voice may still be heard - suave, familiar, peaceable - in a cycle of small poems which, reflecting the Chinese rural year, seem as fresh today as when they first came from his brush. The task of rendering the quality of Chinese poetry into English is temptingly difficult; and success in such an enterprise is rare and rewarding. How it came to be attempted by an English poet with the help of a Chinese scholar is told briefly in Mr Bullett's preface. The current edition is a re-issue of Mr Bullett's 1946 text.