vegetables and fruit were often scarce.
My sick wife carried my weak son,
and they left for a place ten thousand miles away.
We are separated, flesh and bones,
and our family tombs have no one to tend them.
When sorrow is deep, words all gone,
I gaze at clouds riding south till my vision fails.
A sad wind comes and I cry,
“How can I tell heaven my story?”
Poem in the Jueju Form **
The doors are all shut but spring cold still hurts.
The gold-duck incense burner has leftover warmth.
The swallows don't come anymore. Flowers are falling again.
In wind and rain the courtyard slips into its own twilight.
1 These first two lines are from Newly Told Stories (shishuoxinyu). Xie An lived during the Jin dynasty as a hermit in Shangdong province. He turned down many invitations from the court to work for the emperor. He eventually had to come out of his hermitage and began work as an official. Someone asked Xie An why a Chinese herb medicine had two different names, one being “Great Ambition” and the other “Small Weed.” Another official, Hao Long, took advantage of the situation and satirized Xie An by saying, “This is easy to understand: when it stays in the mountains it is called ‘Great Ambition' but when it goes out of the mountains it is a ‘small weed.'”
2 “Net of dust”: a traditional Daoist phrase for the human world, as distinguished from the world of enlightenment in nature.
* The jueju form is a four-line rhyming poem in either five or seven characters. Perhaps the poem is a portrait of the self as abandoned and withered, as Zhao, a former official with the Song dynasty, later worked in the Yuan dynasty, and was looked down upon for this. Though he was a great calligra-pher, critics even argued that his brushstrokes indicated a feminine, malleable, and subservient personality.
MA ZHIYUAN
(c. 12.60–1334)
Yuan dynasty playwright and poet Ma Zhiyuan is best known for his masterly play Autumn in the Han Palace, in which prose passages alternate with qu poems (arias). He wrote between twelve and fourteen plays; eight survive today. He also wrote san qu poems, qu poems written independent of a play. Like ci poems, qu and san qu poems are written in set patterns of rhyme and tonal sequence and characterized by lines of varying length, but they tend to be even more colloquial in their language. From Ma Zhiyuan's poems we know that he was a government official for some time and that in middle age he resigned his position to spend the remainder of his life writing. The poems presented here show his dual attitude toward nature: like Tao Qian, he desires to retire from public life and to be at peace in the wilderness, chasing a butterfly through his dreams; but he also knows that the law of nature is change, and his poem “Autumn Thoughts, to the Tune of ‘Sailing at Night'” evokes the pathos of mutability and nature's indiscriminate devouring of human work and, in “Autumn Thoughts, to the Tune of ‘Sky-Clear Sand,'” of humanity itself.
To the Tune of “Thinking About Nature”
A day is forever in the slow village to the west.
In the tedium, the first cicada buzzes,
sunflowers are poised
to open, and bees invade the morning.
Unconscious on my pillow, I chase a butterfly through my dream.
Autumn Thoughts, to the Tune of “Sky-Clear Sand”
Withered vines, old trees, ravens at dusk.
A small bridge, a flowing brook, a cottage.
Ancient roads, west wind, and a lean horse.
The evening sun dies west.
A broken man at the sky's edge.
Autumn Thoughts, to the Tune of “Sailing at Night”
(Six Poems)
1
One hundred years of light and dark is like a butterfly dream.
Looking back at the past, I can't help sighing.
Today spring comes,
tomorrow blossoms fade.
Hurry up and drink—the night is old, the lamp is going out.
2
Think of the Qin palace and the Han tombs
turned to withered weeds, cow pastures.
Otherwise, fishermen and woodcutters wouldn't chatter here.
Even if broken tombstones still lie across tangled graves,
it's hard to tell a snake from a dragon in the worn inscriptions.
3
After the “fox trace” and “hare hole” battle strategies,
how many heroes survive?
The kingdoms of Wei or Jin are like the waist of a tripod,
snapped in half.
4
Before my eyes the red sun slants west,
fast as a cart racing downhill.
When dawn comes in the clear mirror my hair has turned white.
I might as well say good-bye to my shoes when climbing into bed!
Don't laugh at a turtledove's clumsy nest—
sometimes the fool just plays the fool.
5
Now that fame and money are spent,
I have no worries about right and wrong.
Red dust no longer gathers at my front gate.
Green shade of trees is nice on the cornices.
Blue mountains patch gaps in the wall
of my thatched cottage, my bamboo fence.
6
When crickets chant I sleep well, as if ironed to the bed.
When roosters crow, all things start swirling endlessly.
Will the fight for money and fame ever end?
Packed ants circling and circling in battle formations,
a chaos of swarming, spinning bees making honey,
pushing and buzzing like flies fighting for blood.
Duke Fei of Green Wilderness Hall,1
County Prefect Tao of the White Lotus Society,
we all loved the coming of autumn:2
when dew forms, I pick yellow daylilies;
with frost, I cook purple crabs.
I mull wine over a fire of red leaves.
The life of a man is over after a few cups.
There will only be so many Festivals of the Double Ninth.3
I'm going to tell my wily houseboy:
if anyone sends for me, even Beihai himself,
say that my name is East Fence, and I'm too drunk to come.4
1 Duke Fei refers to Fei Du (765–839), an official and a man of letters in the Tang dynasty. He gave up his efforts at promotion when eunuchs became too powerful in the court. At Dongdu he built a villa called Green Wilderness Hall, where he would often gather with Bai Juyi and Liu Yuxi to drink and compose poems.
2 County Prefect Tao refers to Tao Qian, who was not actually a member of the White Lotus Society (a religious society formed by Huiyuan, a monk from Donglin Temple on Lu Mountain in the Jin dynasty). The references to Tao and Fei evoke images of a lifestyle in which one frees oneself from worldly concerns and appreciates aspects of nature, such as the autumn season.
3 The Festival of the Double Ninth takes place on the ninth day in the ninth month.
4 Beihai refers to Kong Rong (153–208), who was once the governor of Beihai. Kong Rong was well known for his hospitality and for having said, “With guests filling up all my seats, and wine in all my cups, I have nothing to worry about.” Declining to meet Kong Rong when he comes to visit can be understood as a gesture of living spontaneously without being bound by social etiquette.
GUAN DAOSHENG
(1262–1319)
Guan Daosheng (her style name is Guan Zhongji) was the wife of the painter, poet, and official Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322). They were married in 1289 and lived in the capital, Dadu (today's Beijing), and in Wuxing, where she was born and where her husband was later posted. Like Zhao Mengfu, Guan Daosheng was a painter, calligrapher, and poet. Her work was held in high esteem in her time by Emperor Renzong and by critics.
Love Poem **
You and I
have too much passion.
Where the passion is, is hot like fire
I knead a piece of clay into a you
and a me
then smash them
and mix them with water.
Again I knead it into a you
then a me.
There is you in my clay,
and me in your clay.
I'll share your quilt while we live
and your coffin after death.
Fisherman's Song
(Two Poems)
1
I recall several plum trees by my distant Mountain Hall.
Despite the cold, jade flowers open on southern branches
the mountain moon shines
the morning wind blows
and I'm bitterly intent on returning to that clear fragrance again.
2
The great ranks are princes and dukes,
but floating reputation and wealth take away one's freedom.
How can that compare with
a flat boat
and chanting poems about moon and wind without return?
* It is said that Guan Daosheng's husband, Zhao Mengfu, was considering taking a concubine and that he wrote the following lyrical poem to Guan Daosheng to test her reaction:
I'm a scholar-official and you are the official wife.
Haven't you ever heard that scholar-official Wang had Peach Leaf and
Peach Root, Scholar-official Su had Morning Clouds and Evening Clouds? Even if I marry a few beauties from Wu and Yue—it wouldn't be too much since you're already over forty. You'll still control Spring in the Jade Hall.
Guan wrote “Love Poem” in reply. It is said that upon reading it Zhao Mengfu changed his mind and decided not to take a concubine after all.
JIE XISI
(12.74–1344)
Jie Xisi, also known as Manshuo, was a native of Fengcheng, Jiangxi. He was a famous calligrapher and was also known as one of the “Four Great Yuan Dynasty Poets.” He came from a poor family and studied hard to pass the imperial exam, establishing a reputation early on as a man of letters. He worked as a scholar for the court as both an instructor and a historian, and he was in charge of writing the histories for Song, Liao, and Jin. His essays are coherent and laconic, while his poems were compared to “a three-day-old bride” by another poet, his contemporary Yu Ji. Jie Xisi was not happy about the comment and personally interrogated Yu Ji about it. But it is widely acknowledged that his essays are so different from his poems that they seem to have been written by two different people. He has a collection of works entitled Complete Works of Jie Xisi.
Written on a Cold Night
Sparse stars are frozen in frosty sky.
A flowing moon soaks the forest.
I cannot fall asleep in this empty house,
listening to an occasional leaf drop.
Fishing Folk
The man casts a net forth like a flying wheel.
The woman in black rows the oars in the back.
All the family is trusted to waves and mist.
The boat is their house, their neighbors are gulls.
The boys are born to accept poverty,
the girls are born to cook.
Their nets are their fields to plow,
no need to look to others for clothes and food.
The boys will grow up to marry fishermen's daughters.
The girls will be fishermen's wives.
All the blood ties are near each morning.
Each year this broad river gives them all their lives need.
All that's lacking is lower taxes
so they can have enough coins to sleep drunk.
With no surplus but also no debt,
who needs an income of thousands of bushels of crops?
A Portrait of Ducks
Spring grass is very fine yet flourishing.
In spring, baby ducks gradually hatch and are raised,
their velvet hair starting to show color.
They really know how to quack out their names!
SA DUCI
(c.1300-c. 1355)
Sa Duci was a Hui minority poet of the Yuan dynasty. His grandfather and father were military officers who served with merit. But as the family declined, Sa Duci was forced to make a living by traveling as a businessman. In 1327 he passed the national imperial examination, but by this time, some scholars maintain, he was already fifty-five years old. He worked in different positions as a low-ranking official and was very bold in writing a poem satirizing the royal family's bloody rivalry for the throne. His extant works are few, but it is known that he admired and counted as influences the three Li's in the Tang dynasty: Li Bai, Li He, and Li Shangying.
from Shangjing Instant Poems
1
A purple fortress, high wind, powerful bows,
—kings and princes out hunting on horseback.
Summoning eagles and quivering arrows they come back late.
Two white wolves hang facedown from a saddle.
Autumn Day by a Pond
I come to this serene pond in the forest
to kill the endlessness of an idle day.
Gushes of wind mess up duckweed traces.
Falling leaves disperse fish shadows.
Dewdrops are cool on a clear dawn.
Lotus flowers look cold in deep autumn.
I have no one to reveal my thoughts to.
I stand alone, my heart reflecting itself.
To a Zheng Player
Silver nails pluck fifty icy strings;
wind hurries through Sea Gate,
stretching goose formations.
How many complaints are there from old lovers?
Like moonlight filling my boat by the Yangtze River.
MING DYNASTY
(1368–1644)
AFTER THE EXPULSION OF THE MONGOLS, CHINA WAS RULED by the Chinese again in the Ming dynasty, though it was to fall to outsiders yet again with the invasion of the Manchus and the founding of the Qing dynasty. Zhu Yuanzhang, a former monk who had led a rebellion against the Mongols, became the first Ming emperor, taking on the name Hong Wu. He reinstated the imperial examination system, but as the writing of poetry was no longer required, Chinese poetry continued its decline from its height in the Tang and Song dynasties.
Hong Wu was one of three emperors of China with peasant roots. Sympathetic to the plight of the lowly, he instituted low land taxes and shifted the economy's focus from trade to agriculture. Hong Wu reigned from the capital in Nanjing, but under the third Ming emperor the capital was moved to Beijing, and the Forbidden City (so named because it was forbidden to the common folk) was built there as an imperial palace. It was also during the Ming that the Great Wall was reconstructed and expanded into the massive structure we know today.
Hong Wu had come to power by rebellion. As he feared losing power in the same fashion, he violently suppressed those he suspected of fomenting conspiracy and revolt. Hong Wu and his successors micromanaged their empire, delegating little except to the trusted eunuchs, who became exceedingly powerful during the Ming. The eunuchs vied for power with the scholar elites and even formed a secret police to spy upon the rival scholars, the Mandarins. They utilized torture and execution and in the 1620s executed more than seven hundred scholars.
The Ming was a prosperous dynasty, reaching its peak in the early fifteenth century, as new crops were cultivated, the empire spread and collected tribute from neighboring countries, and the population rose to around 100 million people. Seeking to maintain China's cultural purity, the government forbade the Chinese to travel beyond the empire's borders and prohibited trade with foreigners. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and English traders smuggled and forced their way into the lucrative Chinese market. Christian missionaries came in tandem and achieved recognition in the Ming court, where some Jesuits found employment as astronomers.
Despite the isolationist policies of the Ming, the empire was porous and surrounded by enemies. In
the sixteenth century Japanese pirates and Mongol invaders from the north began to erode the empire. War with Japan over Korea in the late sixteenth century and widespread peasant uprisings to protest high taxation in the early years of the seventeenth century culminated in the fall of the dynasty. In 1644 the last emperor of the Ming committed suicide, and the capital at Beijing fell to the rebel leader Li Zicheng. The rebels were driven out, however, when the commander of the Ming army collaborated with the leader of the Manchu army. The Manchus, who had been encroaching upon Ming territory since the 1580s, then seized power and founded a new dynasty, the Qing.
The Ming was famous for its porcelain, and it was also a time of great work in theater and fiction. Printing techniques advanced, fostering the dissemination of literature, the popularization of vernacular short stories of many sorts, and the development of massive and extraordinary novels, most notably The Journey to the West, a rollicking, hilarious account of how a stone monkey traveled to India and brought the Buddhist scriptures back to China; The Plum in the Golden Vase, an intricate, sexually explicit masterpiece; and Three Kingdoms and Water Margin.
In poetry, the Ming's difficult political climate worked to suppress innovation. In fact the Ming is generally regarded as a period of mediocrity in Chinese poetry, despite the prodigious quantity of poems it produced. As one critic observes, “Ming literature is striking in many ways for its routine nature and lack of imagination. The Confucian scholarly class, who seem to have been little more than a decadent middle class, upheld and aggravated an absurd system of examinations that favored their own inertia.”1 The dominance in the Ming of the Old Phraseology School (an antiquarian movement) led to self-conscious imitation of the forms, lines, and themes of great poetry of the past at the expense of originality and creativity. While many Ming poets were content with imitating the height of Chinese poetry in the High Tang, there was also an individualist practice among Ming poets, particularly among such painter-poets as Zhang Yu, Gao Qi, Tang Yin, Shen Zhou, and Yuan Hongdao, who were open to influence from the Song dynasty poets and usually more at home with self-expression than the poets of the Old Phraseology School. As Jonathan Chaves points out, “The sheer quantity of Ming poetry, the quality of so much of it, and its stylistic richness and diversity all cry out for serious attention.”2
The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry Page 32