Prelude To Poetry
This might seem like a pretty basic and uninteresting passage at first. The group that worked on the garden and finished it now ask Jia Zheng to come along with them and help them create spontaneous poetry to accompany and beautify the garden. Jia Zheng tries to find a way out of this, realizing that he does not have the gift of composing beautiful and inspiring text. The passage here sets us up for the incredible outpouring of poetic beauty that we’re going to see for the rest of the novel.
