Abstract：The figure type of Bai Juyi(Bai Letian) stems from Tao Yuanming and guides Su Shi(Su Dongpo). It is one of the most important three character types in Chinese literati. Bai Juyi once drew an analogy between Tao Yuanming and himself, while Su Shi once said he was a bit like Bai Juyi. Actually, from the perspective of inheriting and passing down, Tao Yuanming is the Bai Letian in Jin Dynasty and Su Dongpo is the Bai Juyi in Song Dynasty. Trough discussion of one poem of Su Shi, This paper has elaborated three important litterateur figures in China, namely Tao Yuanming, Bai Juyi and Su Shi, regarding the inheriting and passing down of Xing, Ying, Shen and Shen, Xin, Yi.
Su Shi once wrote in his poem that he was alike with Tao Yuanming with respect to Xing and Shen, and was similar to Letian with respect to Xin and Shen. The so-called Xing, Ying, Shen refer to physics, fame, and sprit separately. Su Shi wrote three poems about Tao Yuanming, from which we can see his great admiration for Tao Yuanming. In Su Shi's eyes, Tao was the one that had a comprehensive understanding of the whole World and himself as well. But Bai Juyi was the one who first discovered the cultural value of Tao Yuanming before Su Shi. Admiring both Tao and Bai, Su seized the opportunity of writing comments for the book called Letian Shenxin Wenda collected by one of his friends to express his own opinion. Including Xing, Ying, Shen of Tao's and Shen Xin of Bai's, Su put forward two other concepts called Wu and Wo and discussed the interactions between Wu and Wo. The Tao Yuanming's Xing, Ying, Shen was all based on internal World which viewed the World from one's own perspective. In comparison, Bai's Shen Xin involved external World, which attached more importance to the interaction between the inner world and the outside World. While Su Shi's opinion on this issue was that both Xing & Shen and Shen & Xin were two sides of a coin, complementary to each other and could not be devided.
The Tao Yuanming's Xing, Ying, Shen in Jin Dynasty, the Bai Juyi's Shen Xin in Tang Dynasty and the Su Dongpo's Wu Wo in Song Dynasty accomplish the spiritual communication between the three poets from different dynasties. This communication lays a solid foundation for Chinese literati character pattern, and led three major changes of the thoughts of Chinese literati which happened in the ages of Yuanjia, Yuanhe and Yuanyou (also called San Yuan or San Guan in the history of poetics).
Why those changes are so important is mainly because they inquire large space and also more time to take place. And representatives like Tao, Bai and Su are highly needed for the transitions to be admitted by the whole society.
