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Tang Dynasty Jueju Li Bai

Question and Answer in the Mountains

山中答問

Shān zhōng dá wèn

Also called 山中問答, An Answer in the Mountains.

A smile and a stream of peach blossoms answer a question about living in the hills. Read the Chinese, pinyin, word meanings, and original English translation.

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Read the original and its translation together. Open a line’s word meanings for a closer look.

About the text and pronunciation

The simplified view changes character forms, not the edition. Notes and sources retain the cited text.

The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.

Word by word, in the order of the line. A gloss is a crib. It is not the translation.

01

問余何事棲碧山，

wèn yú hé shì qī bì shān

You ask why I make my home in the blue-green hills.

Word meanings — Line 1
  1. 問余 wèn yú ask me
  2. 何事 hé shì for what reason
  3. 棲 qī dwell
  4. 碧山 bì shān blue-green hills
02

笑而不答心自閒。

xiào ér bù dá xīn zì xián

I smile without answering; my heart is at ease.

Word meanings — Line 2
  1. 笑 xiào smile
  2. 而 ér and
  3. 不答 bù dá do not answer
  4. 心 xīn heart
  5. 自閒 zì xián at ease of itself
03

桃花流水杳然去，

táo huā liú shuǐ yǎo rán qù

Peach blossoms and flowing water recede far away;

Word meanings — Line 3
  1. 桃花 táo huā peach blossoms
  2. 流水 liú shuǐ flowing water
  3. 杳然 yǎo rán into the distance
  4. 去 qù go
04

別有天地非人間。

bié yǒu tiān dì fēi rén jiān

there is another world here, beyond the human bustle.

Word meanings — Line 4
  1. 別有 bié yǒu there is another
  2. 天地 tiān dì world
  3. 非 fēi not
  4. 人間 rén jiān human world

English translation by PoemWell.

Read the whole poem

Original

問余何事棲碧山，

笑而不答心自閒。

桃花流水杳然去，

別有天地非人間。

Translation

You ask why I make my home in the blue-green hills.

I smile without answering; my heart is at ease.

Peach blossoms and flowing water recede far away;

there is another world here, beyond the human bustle.

Try it from memory

After reading, recall the underlined word or phrase in each line. Say its meaning before opening the answer. These prompts use the text edition printed above.

  1. Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?

    問余何事棲碧山，

    Pronunciation hint

    wèn yú

    Reveal meaning and translation

    問余 — ask me

    You ask why I make my home in the blue-green hills.

  2. Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?

    桃花流水杳然去，

    Pronunciation hint

    táo huā

    Reveal meaning and translation

    桃花 — peach blossoms

    Peach blossoms and flowing water recede far away;

  3. Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?

    別有天地非人間。

    Pronunciation hint

    bié yǒu

    Reveal meaning and translation

    別有 — there is another

    there is another world here, beyond the human bustle.

One more question: what changes?

Compare the opening and closing lines. What changes in the scene, the speaker’s attention, or the feeling? Choose a Chinese word as evidence, then compare your reading with the notes. More than one answer may be reasonable.

Line-by-line notes →

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Line-by-line notes

Lines 1–2 — The question and the smile

何事 asks for a reason. 棲 can describe a bird's roost, and here puts a person's dwelling in the blue-green hills in similarly spare terms. “Make my home” takes the verb in that human sense. 笑而不答 supplies a smile in place of a reason, and 心自閒 lets the reader feel something of the speaker's ease before seeing the landscape.

Lines 3–4 — An answer that can be looked at

杳然 lets peach blossoms and their stream recede into a distance that is hard to follow. The image can recall the secluded world of the Peach Blossom Spring. 別有天地 says that another world is here. The English uses “the human bustle” for 人間 to make that separation felt as a separation from ordinary social life. Read the final two lines back against 何事. They show the place and how it feels to be there, which may answer more of the question than a reason would.

Form and tone

The seven-character quatrain gives a question, a withheld answer, and two lines that work as an answer through images. 山, 閒, and 間 form the rhyme. The explicit refusal to speak makes the remaining speech more playful.

See the quatrain guide for the form. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin pronunciation; no unverified historical tone grid is supplied.

Historical context

This poem’s title also circulates with the order 問答. We retain the linked witness’s 答問 in the Chinese heading and index the other title as an alias. Its mountain life is presented through a voice and an invitation to look, not a dated account of retirement.

Continue with Li Bai or the nature shelf.

Sources

Chinese text compared with 山中答問, public transcription on Wikisource. Punctuation is editorial; the English translation and reading notes are original to PoemWell.

English translation, gloss, and notes by PoemWell. The translation is original to this site.

The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.

Updated .

Cite this reading

Li Bai. “Question and Answer in the Mountains” (山中答問). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .

https://poemwell.org/poems/question-and-answer-in-the-mountains

Credit the poet for the Chinese original and PoemWell for this translation and commentary. Use the permanent page link above; source editions are listed separately.