Early this year, I traveled from Taizhou to Jiaxing and stopped at the Xinchang service area along the way. I remember how upscale it was: there were chain stores such as Starbucks and KFC, local snacks such as soup dumplings and zongzi, and even a fruit shop that felt thoughtfully put together. With its attractive surroundings and high-end interior, it seemed more like a shopping mall than a highway service area. The scenery in the distance was lovely too. Only when I opened a map did I realize that the famous Mount Tianmu—the final character is pronounced mǔ—was nearby.

In “Dreaming of Mount Tianmu: A Farewell in Verse,” Li Bai wrote: “Seafarers speak of Yingzhou, / Yet through the misty waves it is truly hard to find; / The people of Yue speak of Tianmu, / Sometimes visible through the flickering clouds and rosy light. / Tianmu joins the sky, stretching across the heavens, / Towering above the Five Sacred Peaks and overshadowing Chicheng. / Tiantai rises forty-eight thousand zhang, / Yet before it seems to topple, leaning southeast.” Tianmu, Tiantai, and Chicheng, all mentioned in the poem, are mountain names, and all are in this area.

Much of the rest of the poem describes the scenery of Mount Tianmu. Whether it is “Halfway up the cliff, I see the sun rise from the sea; / In the air, I hear the heavenly rooster,” or “The clouds grow dark, as though rain is coming; / The waters shimmer, and mist begins to rise,” the descriptions are wonderfully vivid. Imagine how many travelers this poem has drawn to the mountain over the thousand-plus years since it was written, and how much publicity it has brought Tianmu!

But we should not forget that this is not simply a landscape poem. It is a poem about a dream journey. At the time, Li Bai had never actually been to Mount Tianmu. When he wrote it, he was in Shandong, having just been given gold and sent away by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang.

This reminds me of Fan Zhongyan’s “An Account of Yueyang Tower.” With passages such as “When the relentless rain falls on and on” and “When spring is mild and the scenery bright,” he brings the scenery of Dongting Lake vividly to life. Yet he was actually in Dengzhou, Henan, a thousand li away from the lake.

Fan Zhongyan had never seen Yueyang Tower, and Li Bai had not yet visited Mount Tianmu, but both wrote masterpieces that have endured through the ages. Similarly, Bai Juyi had never met Emperor Minghuang of Tang or his consort Yang, yet he wrote “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow.” Du Mu had certainly never seen the Epang Palace; he relied entirely on his imagination to write “Rhapsody on the Epang Palace.”

I kept thinking about this phenomenon and eventually arrived at three conclusions that may offer some guidance for how we speak, act, and write:

1. Describing scenery is not what matters, nor is recounting events. What matters is expressing your own ideas and feelings: your ideas must be profound and clear, and your feelings sincere and intense.

The soul of “An Account of Yueyang Tower” lies not in its two landscape passages, but in its final discussion, especially the line “Be the first to worry about the world’s troubles, and the last to enjoy its pleasures.” The most moving part of “Dreaming of Mount Tianmu: A Farewell in Verse” is likewise its final line: “How could I bow my head and bend my back to serve the powerful, and so be unable to smile freely?” “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” ends with “Even enduring heaven and earth will one day come to an end; / But this sorrow stretches on, without an end,” expressing the poet’s lament. The finishing touch in “Rhapsody on the Epang Palace” is also its final sentence: “The people of Qin had no time to mourn their own downfall, so those who came after mourned for them; if later generations mourn for them without learning from them, they too will give still later generations cause to mourn.”

Aimless descriptions of scenery and accounts of events have no value—or, at most, historical value, but certainly no literary value. Without the writer’s feelings and ideas, descriptions and narratives have no soul. However many rhetorical devices they employ, they are merely piles of ornamental language and will sooner or later be swept into the dustbin of history.

2. To express your ideas and feelings well, the buildup matters.

Chinese literature places great emphasis on bi and xing: beginning with something else, then leading into what you really want to say. From this perspective, describing scenery and recounting events are both important, because a few dry maxims are unlikely to move anyone. Nobody likes being preached at; first, you need to create a setting in which the other person can accept what you have to say. It is like dating: you cannot simply launch into sexually suggestive talk. You have to chat a little first.

Ouyang Xiu wrote a short piece about Fan Zhongyan’s diligence in studying, probably intended for children. After describing Fan’s hard work, he immediately adds: “He would often recite to himself, ‘One should be the first to worry about the world’s troubles, and the last to enjoy its pleasures.’” Read this way, the line seems not to have originated in “An Account of Yueyang Tower,” but to have been something Fan had long been saying.

In fact, we have reason to believe that Fan already aspired to “worry first and enjoy last,” and that Li Bai had long been unwilling to “bow his head and bend his back.” Perhaps they often said such things in daily life. Yet what truly preserved “worry first and enjoy last” and “refuse to bow and scrape before the powerful” were those two works with their extensive descriptions of scenery.

People in northern China may make a whole table of dumplings for the sake of a small dish of vinegar; people in Sichuan may cook a bowl of noodles to finish off some leftovers. Often, we write an entire essay for the sake of a single sentence. But only when the groundwork has been laid, the emotions built up, and readers prepared both emotionally and intellectually can that sentence make their hearts tremble, send a tingle across their scalps, and give them a sudden flash of insight.

3. You have to see enough of the world to construct a representative image in your mind, and then to put that image into words.

In literature, invention is perfectly normal. The English name for the literary genre “fiction” itself means something invented or imagined. Compared with works of fiction, these inventions by Fan Zhongyan and Li Bai are “nothing at all,” to borrow a Tianjin expression.

But these inventions do not come from nowhere. They all draw on the writers’ own experiences. Fan Zhongyan grew up in Suzhou and, after entering government service, spent many years serving around Nanjing and Hangzhou. He had seen plenty of great rivers, and with his geographical knowledge, imagining the appearance of Dongting Lake would not have been difficult. As for Li Bai, there is even less need to explain: “Seeking immortals among the Five Sacred Peaks, I never shrink from distance; / All my life I have loved to roam the famous mountains.” What mountains had he not seen? Imagining Mount Tianmu was well within his abilities, something he could do with ease. Bai Juyi enjoyed investigating things and reading. At the time, he was serving as an official near Mawei Station and had carried out inquiries there. Stories such as “The white-haired palace women remain, / Sitting at leisure, speaking of Xuanzong” circulated from person to person, and he had gathered some of them too. Du Mu’s line “Ten years, one dream of Yangzhou; / All I have won is a faithless name in the pleasure quarters” shows that he had not only seen many grand buildings but also knew a great deal about women’s lives. These were all indispensable materials for writing “Rhapsody on the Epang Palace.”

This shows that writing cannot be a heap of decorative phrases, but neither can it be excessively blunt and terse. We must experience more, reflect more, and put pen to paper more often. Only through repeated attempts and adjustments can we give a piece of writing substance and life, making it worth reading. Our aim is to move readers, persuade them, and help them accept the information we want to convey. Any rules and restrictions that get in the way of that aim should be broken.