人面不知何处去

From 崔护《题都城南庄》(Cui Hu, Tang, late 8th c.): 去年今日此门中，人面桃花相映红。人面不知何处去，桃花依旧笑春风 (A year ago on this day, within this gate, a human face and peach blossoms reflected each other red. The face now — I do not know where it has gone; the peach blossoms, as before, smile at the spring wind). The story: the young Cui Hu, thirsty, knocked on a cottage gate and was given water by a beautiful girl; a year later he returned, the gate was locked, and in grief he wrote the poem on the door. Legend says she had wasted away from longing and revived when she saw it — but the poem stands on its own as a meditation on transience.

Always recited with 桃花依旧笑春风 (the peach blossoms still smile at the spring wind). The contrast of stable scenery and vanished person is the poem's emotional engine. The compressed idiom 人面桃花 ('face and peach blossoms') comes from the earlier line in the same poem.