Wong Tai Sin lot 24 of 100
Bai Juyi retires
Lowest (下下). Grade as given on the named web transcriptions. We have not seen it on a temple printing, and we do not know that the temple prints one.
詩酒琴棋可解愁
座中無客樂難休
或彈或唱誰知美
冷飲雖多亦是憂
Poetry, wine, zither and chess can ease sorrow.
With no guests in the seat, the pleasure is hard to stop.
Some play and some sing, and who knows how lovely it is.
Drinking alone in the cold, however much, is still a worry.
What this lot says
Hobbies bring comfort, but the verse points at the limit: the drink is plentiful and still a source of worry, and the guests are absent.
It is graded lowest. Read it as a caution that comfort taken alone, or taken too far, does not settle the worry underneath.
A lot is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.
The story behind it
Bai Juyi retires (白居易歸隱)
A traditional allusion named with this lot. We have not traced the story to a source we could read, so we do not retell it here.
Where this text comes from
This verse is a traditional temple text with no known author, here read from named web transcriptions. We compared the sites character by character and show every difference. We could not establish whether the sites are independent of one another, and we have not read a temple printing.
Fortune Sticks (fortunesticks.org) (the text shown above)
詩酒琴棋可解愁 / 座中無客樂難休 / 或彈或唱誰知美 / 冷飲雖多亦是憂
Retrieved 2026-11-09
Luckeyes (算命眼, luckeyes.com)
詩酒琴棋可解愁 / 座中無客樂難休 / 或彈或唱誰知美 / 冷飲雖多亦是憂
Retrieved 2026-11-09
Andy.hk (加賀風水)
詩酒琴棋可解愁 / 座中無客樂難休 / 或彈或唱誰知美 / 呤飲雖多亦是憂
Retrieved 2026-11-09
Where the sources differ
- Line 4, character 1: fortunesticks.org and luckeyes.com read 冷; andy.hk reads 呤. This is a different character.
- The allusion in the lot title: fortunesticks.org and luckeyes.com name it 白居易歸隱; andy.hk names it 劉基歸隱.
- Line 4: the temple's website (Sik Sik Yuen, taonet.siksikyuen.org.hk) opens the line with 吟飲須多 where the three sites have 冷飲雖多 or 呤飲雖多.
- The allusion in the lot title: the temple's website (Sik Sik Yuen, taonet.siksikyuen.org.hk) names it 秦琼賣馬.
English translation and commentary are by Cast & Chart.