Pei Di.

About Pei Di

Pei Di was a Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty, approximate year of birth 714, with twenty preserved poems in the Wangchuan ji poetry collection and one work included in the popular Three Hundred Tang Poems. Pei Di was a contemporary of Wang Wei, although younger by fifteen years. The Wangchuan ji poetry collaboration between Pei Di and Wang Wei collects twenty matching poems by Wang Wei and Pei Di. The name is also rendered into English as "P'ei Ti" or "Pei Shidi". The close personal friendship between Wang Wei and Pei Di is preserved in a letter by Wang Wei inviting Pei for a Springtime visit together at Wang's country estate. This letter has been translated by Arthur Waley. Pei also had a poetic relationship with Du Fu. Other than through Pei Di's few surviving poems, and the poems addressed to him by Wang Wei and Du Fu, "pitifully little" is known about Pei Di, other than that he had a reasonably successful government career. According to one source, Pei Di: saved Wang's life by smuggling one of his poems out of prison—proof he was being held by the rebels against his will. The two were separated at last when Pei Di was made governor of Szechuan, then a wild, remote place, reachable only by treacherous plank paths hung from the sides of cliffs."