Wong Tai Sin lot 28 of 100
Bai Juyi listens to the pipa
Middling (中平). 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.
船泊潯陽月夜天
琵琶一曲動人憐
相思兩地憑誰寄
白雪摧人上鬢巔
A boat is moored at Xunyang under a moonlit sky.
One tune on the pipa moves people to pity.
Missing each other in two places, who will carry the message?
White hair crowds up over the temples.
What this lot says
A night on the river, a sad tune, and two people apart with no one to carry word between them. The last line adds age to the sadness.
It reads as a lot about distance and the passing of time. The middling grade reflects that the feeling is wistful, not disastrous.
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 listens to the pipa (白居易聽琵琶)
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)
船泊潯陽月夜天 / 琵琶一曲動人憐 / 相思兩地憑誰寄 / 白雪摧人上鬢巔
Retrieved 2026-11-09
Luckeyes (算命眼, luckeyes.com)
船泊潯陽月夜天 / 琵琶一曲動人憐 / 相思兩地憑誰寄 / 白雪摧人上鬢巔
Retrieved 2026-11-09
Andy.hk (加賀風水)
船泊潯陽月夜天 / 琵琶一曲動人憐 / 相思兩地憑誰寄 / 白雪摧人上鬢巔
Retrieved 2026-11-09
Where the sources differ
- The allusion in the lot title: fortunesticks.org and luckeyes.com name it 白居易聽琵琶; andy.hk names it 潯陽江聽琵琶.
English translation and commentary are by Cast & Chart.