Jia Yi

Jia Yi (c. 201-169 BCE)

"The span of life is fated;
How can you guess its ending?
Heaven and Earth are the furnace,
The workman, the Creator;
His coal is the yin and the yang,
his copper, all things of creation."

• Excerpt of a Jia Yi poem (c. 174 BCE), included in the Records of the Grand Historian (Shi Ji, 84) by Sima Qian. Translated by Burton Watson (Columbia University Press, 1993).

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