In 731 he went to the Chinese frontier where there were many military conflicts and stayed for about 8 years. His bad luck changed rather quickly when he got to know poets Zhang Jiuling and Meng Haoran and he eventually ended up as an assistant censor.
After passing the exams, his first job was to act as a musician but, following a mistake in etiquette, he was moved to looking after the court granary. At 19 he moved to the capital to undertake exams to enter into civil service and, while he was doing this, his ability as a poet came to the knowledge of the royal court. Wang Wei was a precocious and very talented child. He was born into aristocracy in 699 in Jinzhong and spent much of his life as a government official, as well as rising to the high status of a poet. Punctuated Chinese texts for all translations and a character glossary of key terms and names appear in appendixes-both of these features are unique among translations of Wang Wei's work.In 8th Century China, Wang Wei was one of the most renowned poets and artists of the age and around 400 of his works survive to this day. The individual poems, however, are allowed to speak for themselves and are accompanied only by notes and commentary explaining historical and literary allusions. Pauline Yu's exegeses opening each chapter of poetry suggest some interpretive guidelines. An extensive introductory chapter discusses Taoist and "metaphysical" traditions in Chinese literature as well as Western Symbolist, post-Symbolist, and phenomenological theories as they pertain to the poetry of Wang Wei. She corrects previous translators' prejudices for the nature poetry of Wang Wei by including generous samplings of the poet's juvenilia, court poetry, and Buddhist verse.
Pauline Yu has translated and annotated 150 of his poems, the most representative selection of Wang Wei in English to date. Although his poetry has been translated in the West, Wang Wei has not received a great deal of critical attention because of the elusive quality of his work. A central figure during the peak of Tang dynasty literary activity, the poet Wang Wei (701-761) combined a subtle, deceptively simple imagery with a profound philosophical interpretation of the world based on integration and harmony.
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