Wang Bo, courtesy name Zian, was a celebrated literary figure of the early Tang Dynasty. A child prodigy, he could compose essays swiftly and skillfully by age six, and by fourteen, he could improvise poetry at banquets. Alongside Yang Jiong, Lu Zhaolin, and Luo Binwang, he was hailed as one of the "Four Great Poets of the Early Tang." He passed the imperial examinations at fifteen and served as a military advisor, but was later dismissed from office due to a crime.
In 676 AD, the renowned poet Wang Bo journeyed to Jiaozhi (in modern-day Vietnam) to visit his father, a county magistrate. Passing through Hongdu (now Nanchang, Jiangxi), he was invited by Governor Yan Boyu to a Double Ninth Festival banquet at the newly restored Tengwang Pavilion. Yan had secretly instructed his son-in-law Wu Zizhang, a talented scholar, to prepare a celebratory essay in advance, hoping to impress the assembled literati. When Yan grandly produced paper and brush, he feigned a polite request for contributions, but the guests, sensing the trap, demurred. Wang Bo, however, accepted without hesitation. Enraged, Yan ordered a servant to report each line Wang wrote. When the first lines arrived—"The old pavilion overlooks the river; its golden gates and jade carvings still gleam"—Yan scoffed, "Nothing new." But as Wang continued, "The solitary wild goose flies with the autumn clouds; the vast sky meets the endless water," Yan grew silent. Finally, the servant rushed in with the immortal couplet: "The setting clouds fly with the lone duck; the autumn river shares one color with the vast sky." Yan leaped to his feet, exclaiming, "This is a genius from heaven! His work shall live forever!" He then warmly welcomed Wang Bo as the guest of honor, and Wu Zizhang, humbled, burned his own draft.
At the banquet, Yan Boyu made a show of inviting guests to compose a preface for the Tengwang Pavilion. Everyone, unprepared, politely declined. When the invitation reached Wang Bo, however, he did not refuse—instead, he took up his brush and wrote the "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion" in one breath, without pause. The guests read it and praised it unanimously. After reading it, Yan Boyu himself was deeply impressed, admitting that this preface far surpassed what his own son-in-law could have written, and so he no longer called upon Wu Zizhang to present his work.
In his masterpiece *Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng*, Wang Bo crafted a text of exquisite structure and flowing brilliance, weaving together the splendor of a grand gathering with his own lament over unfulfilled ambition: "The mountain passes are steep and hard to cross—who mourns for the traveler who has lost his way? Like duckweed drifting on water, we meet by chance, all strangers in a foreign land." With these words, he gave voice to a deep sense of being born in the wrong era, grieving his own ill fortune.
Shortly after, Wang Bo left Hongdu and set out for Jiaozhi. Tragically, he drowned while crossing the sea, dying at just 26 years old.
Later, the idiom "Ping Shui Xiang Feng" came to be used to describe strangers meeting by chance.
Source: *Wang Zi'an Collection*, "Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "萍水相逢" came to describe strangers meeting by chance.