罨画池

About this audio guide

This guide to Yanhua Chi in Chengdu follows the poet Lu You, who arrived in Shuzhou in 1173 still furious at being handed a quiet county post instead of a return to the front against the Jin invaders. It traces how he filled his days at this Song-dynasty ornamental pond, dug over a century earlier by the magistrate Zhao Bian, keeping a forty-person music ensemble and judging tea contests while colleagues complained he had gone slack. You'll hear the self-mocking nickname he adopted, built from his own failure and worn like a badge. Stand at the water's edge where he wandered for twenty-two months, weighing whether soldiering or feasting was the real waste of a life.