The story begins when Bai Juyi studied hard in Fuli when he was a boy. Amid the predicament of war, displacement and family decline, he planted the seeds of his literary dream. His mother's teachings and his first awareness of the hardships of people's livelihood allowed the precocious Bai Juyi to reveal his poetic talent at an early age. While taking refuge in the south of the Yangtze River, the mountains and rivers of Suzhou and Hangzhou and the sufferings of the people became his nourishment. The idea of "writing articles based on the times" first emerged, and it was here that he developed an ignorant relationship with Xiang Ling.
When he first entered Chang'an, he surprised Gu Kuang with "Farewell to the Ancient Grass", breaking the joke that "living in Chang'an is not easy" and established himself with his talent. After passing the imperial examination, he met Yuan Zhen in the high spirits of Yanta's inscription, starting a lifelong friendship and officially entering the official career. When he was the school secretary, his ideals were thwarted for the first time by the extravagance and strife in the officialdom. His love with Xiang Ling was blocked by his family background, which made him even more bitter, but it also planted the seeds for the creation of allegorical poems.
During his tenure as Zuo Shiyi, he admonished the officials with outspokenness and confronted the powerful. His series of poems "New Yuefu" and "Qin Zhongyin" shocked the government and the public, and fully demonstrated his ambition to "help the world at the same time". "Song of Everlasting Sorrow", which he composed while visiting Xianyou Temple with his friends, caused a sensation in the capital with his artistic pinnacle, but it also concealed the fear of those in power. The sharpness of his allegorical poems made him the target of public criticism. Yuan Zhen was demoted and the pressure from his family to force a marriage came one after another. When Wu Yuanheng was assassinated, he was the first to write a letter, which eventually became a breakthrough point for attacks by political enemies and he was demoted to Jiangzhou Sima.
