The line opens a poem he wrote in 1201 for a banquet held for Guilin's successful exam candidates:
桂林山水甲天下，
玉碧罗青意可参, 'Guilin's hills and waters are first under heaven, jade-green and gauze-blue, worth pondering'. The poem was carved on a cliff in the city, and only the rediscovery of that carving in the 1980s showed where the famous saying came from.
