Dongpo Chibi in Huanggang

The Great River flows east, its waves washing away all heroic figures across millennia. West of the ancient ramparts, men say, lies the Red Cliff of Master Zhou of the Three Kingdoms. With feather fan and silk cap, amid chatting and laughing, masts and oars dissolved into smoke and ashes.

Lodging like mayflies between heaven and earth, tiny as a single grain in the vast ocean. Lamenting the transience of our brief life, envying the unending flow of the Great Yangtze. Only the clear breeze over the river and the bright moon among mountains: when ear hears it, it becomes sound; when eye meets it, it becomes color. Taking without prohibition, using without exhaustion—this is the boundless inexhaustible treasury of the Creator.

The river surged with audible currents, the sheer bluffs rose a thousand feet; the mountains loomed high beneath a diminutive moon, and as the waters receded, jagged rocks emerged. How brief the passage of days and months, yet the landscape is transformed beyond recognition!

A broken halberd buried in the sand, its iron unconsumed; washed and polished, it reveals an ancient dynasty. Had the east wind not favored Master Zhou, spring in the Bronze Sparrow Tower would have locked away the Two Qiaos.