The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry

by Tony Barnstone

  A Comment on Wang Shigu's Painting Portfolio

  He doesn't paint sunny mountains, but rainy mountains,

  like breathing on a bright mirror to show misty hair.

  Better to obscure the ten thousand images of the human world

  so wind horses and cloud wagons can come and go at will.

  ZHAO YI

  (172.7–1814)

  Zhao Yi was an important poet and historian from Yanghu. He was born poor and supported himself at first as a private tutor. In 1761 he passed the imperial examination and in a long career served in many official capacities. Upon being appointed the prefect of Zhenan, Guanxi province, in 1766, he showed himself to be a reformer, dedicated to helping the common people. From 1784 to 1786 he became the director of the Anting Academy in Yangzhou. In addition to writing a collection of “poetry talk” (critical notes on poetry), he wrote a dynastic history, histories of military campaigns, and other important works. He was a friend of Yuan Mei (1716–1798) and was considered along with Yuan Mei and the poet and playwright Jiang Shiquan (1725–1785) one of the three greatest poets of Southern China. As noted in the Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, at the age of eighty-three he gave himself the nickname “The Old Man with Three Halves”—”that is to say, with eyes that could only half see, with ears that could only half hear, and with a voice that could only be half heard.”

  from Reading at Leisure

  (Poem Six of Six)

  6

  When people read classics,

  they read themselves.

  This is like in a plaza

  where an audience rings the high stage.

  The short man stands on the floor,

  he stretches his neck and stands on his toes.

  But there are people in high towers on balconies

  who watch the performance at eye level.

  The show is the same

  but the impressions all different.

  The short man returns from the theater

  bragging about having a close look.

  The people upstairs

  cannot help cracking up.

  In a Boat

  She serves two jobs at once—

  who says the woman from Wu is unwise?

  Carrying a baby on her back,

  she rocks the oar and her baby at the same time.

  On Poetry

  Li Bai's and Du Fu's poems have passed through ten thousand mouths and now they are no longer fresh.

  From the rivers and mountains of each dynasty new talents emerge to dominate poetry for a few hundred years.

  from Poem Composed While Living at Houyuan Garden

  1

  A guest suddenly appeared knocking at my door

  coming to give me a commission for my brush.

  He asked me, “Write an epitaph

  that will be elegantly written and flattering.

  Compare his administration to Long and Huang,1

  his scholarship to the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi.”2

  I did it as a joke

  and gave him just what he wanted

  in a patchwork composition.

  I made the man sound like quite a gentleman.

  Check his epitaph against his deeds

  and you'll find not one ounce of truth in a hundred pounds.

  If this epitaph is passed on

  who can know who's really a paragon and who is not?

  Maybe people will quote my epitaph

  so it ends up in the history books.

  Now it's clear to me: at least half

  of history is pure lies.

  1 Long and Huang: famous Han dynasty ministers.

  2 Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi: well-known scholars and philosophers of the Song dynasty.

  WU ZAO

  (1799–1863)

  Wu Zao, also known as Wu Pingxiang, came from Renhe, Zhejiang province (modern-day Hangzhou). She demonstrated exceptional literary talent at an early age. A productive poet who wrote in the ci and sanqu forms, she was a celebrated songwriter (“Qiaoyin,” a yuefu tune she composed, was very popular and widely circulated) and was the author of a play titled Drinking Wine and Studying Encountering Sorrow. The daughter of a merchant, her arranged marriage to another merchant was not very successful, which explains the search for a spiritual companion as one of her major themes. Late in life she moved into solitude to study Buddhism. She has two collections of lyric songs: Flower Curtain (hualian ci), which was composed before she was thirty, and Fragrant South Snowy North (xiangnan xuebei ji), a collection of her later works. Her reputation was very high in her day, and her poems have been widely anthologized, translated, and studied.

  To the Tune of “Song of Flirtation”

  On the flower path,

  flower path,

  a sad person's lone shadow appears.

  Deep night, chill moon, ice wind,

  where is that broken flute from a tower?

  Broken flute,

  broken flute,

  you sing the news of early plum flowers.

  To the Tune of “Beautiful Lady Yu”

  Dawn window. I rise and roll up the curtain

  and cold slices my fingers like scissor blades.

  Last night in sparse rain and wind

  countless crab apple flowers

  turned wretchedly thin and red.

  Maybe it's the flowers that have made me sick.

  I am too sluggish to look in the mirror.

  The sun is tall but I don't even comb out my hair.

  I just listen to swallows murmuring about spring sorrow.

  Feelings Recollected on Returning from

  Fahua Mountain on a Wintry

  Day, to the Tune of “Waves Scour the Sands”

  All my way home I gaze on mountains

  as in the mountains my road turns.

  A thin cloud and pavilion rain darkens the setting sun.

  Here and there are white flowering reeds.

  The wind is caterwauling.

  Since ancient times, graves have crowded other graves,

  and not just broken tombstones.

  How many people are burying bones and how many in grief?

  In snow a red stove starts and goes cold again,

  fated to become ash.

  To the Tune of “A Song of the Cave Immortals”

  Old moonlight

  shining in the old window.

  I'm too lazy to find the old sheng music scores by the window.

  Let spring be long or short,

  flowers fall or bloom.

  I have never seen

  long-gone flowing light regained.

  For no good reason I woke from a new dream

  and saw clear in my mind

  how each year is exactly the same,

  the same autumn chill,

  the same sadness,

  same separation.

  Why do we need elixirs to make our pink faces stay

  if butterflies can fly in pairs

  oblivious of how soon spring will die?

  To the Tune of “Clear and Even Music”

  A courtyardful of bitter rain

  has sent autumn home;

  only the poetic impulse has no place to land,

  disappearing into white clouds and red trees.

  At dusk comes a cold moon and a misty grief.

  The Xiang curtain will not release from its silver hook

  but tonight my dream will travel on the wind,

  carrying a chill and flying out from the jade tower.

  To the Tune of “Washing Creek Sands”

  Here is a volume of Enduring Sorrow and a book of Buddhist sutras.

  For ten years I hid desires, for ten years read by lamplight

  listening to autumn on the banana leaves.

  I tried to weep but couldn't, so I forced a smile.

  I couldn't escape from sorrow, so I learned to forget

  and to mislead people with clever talk.

  QIU JINr />
  (1879–1907)

  Qiu Jin was from Zhejiang province, where from a young age she studied martial arts and wrote poetry. In 1896 she married Wang Zifang, with whom she had two children, but the marriage was unhappy, and her poetry reflects her disappointment in her domestic life. She moved with her family to Beijing but fled the city during the 1900 Boxer Uprising. In 1904 Qiu Jin left her family and went to study in Japan, where she participated in anti-Manchu radicalism (she blamed the Manchu government for China's weakness and poverty) and joined feminist groups as well as the Restoration Society and Sun Yat-sen's United League. Returning to China, she worked as a teacher in several schools and ran the newspaper Chinese Women, which sought to promote equality between the sexes. She wrote essays promoting feminism and nationalism and was involved in planning an uprising against the Qing court, for which on July 15, 1907, in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, she was arrested and decapitated.

  A Poem Written at Mr. Ishii's Request and

  Using the Same Rhymes as His Poem

  Don't tell me that women can't make heroes,

  I rode ocean wind alone eastward for ten thousand li.

  My poetic thoughts chased sails between sea and heaven.

  My dreaming soul lingered with a crystal moon in the three islands of Japan.

  I grieve to think of China's brass guardian camels sunk in thorns.

  I'm ashamed—I have no real victories. I've just made my horses sweat.

  So much national enmity hurts my heart.

  How can I spend my days as a traveler here enjoying spring wind?

  Letter to Xu Jichen**

  Who talked passionately with me about fighting common enemies?

  Who idolized the traveling swordsman Guo Jie?1

  Now things have gotten so dangerous,

  please change your girl's garments for a Wu sword.

  * Qiu Jin sent this poem as a letter to her close friend Xu Jichen. After Qiu Jin's death, Xu Jichen and Wu Zhiyin risked their lives and had a tomb built for her by the Xileng Bridge at West Lake in Hangzhou province.

  1 Guo Jie was a well-known Han dynasty traveling swordsman who devoted his life to fighting for justice and helping those in need.

  SU MANSHU (THE HALF MONK)

  (1884–1918)

  Novelist, poet, Buddhist monk, and revolutionary Su Manshu was born Su Jian in 1884 in Yokohama, Japan. His father was a Chinese merchant, and his mother his father's Japanese maid. As a youth he attended school in China, then returned to Japan where he studied in Tokyo and became involved in student revolutionary groups seeking to overthrow the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty. He traveled widely across Asia, getting involved in revolutionary activities, working as a radical journalist, and writing poems and fiction. He translated into Chinese the poems of Byron, whom he saw as his poetic master. Eventually he converted to Buddhism, taking the name “Manshu” and coming to be known as “the half monk” of the Southern School of Poets. He wrote many love poems and despite his vows was known for having affairs.

  from Ten Narrative Poems

  3

  Dante and Byron are my masters.

  My talent is like rivers and oceans, but my fate's thin as a silk

  thread. Don't let my red string break for a beauty. Who will listen to my lone fury, my sour emotion?

  8

  Green Jade, don't brood over your coarse background.

  You are a fairy from my hometown; only you can erode my soul.

  My robe is flecked with dots and dots like cherry petals,

  half from your lipstick, and half from tears.

  9

  From a tall tower a flute plays spring drizzle.1

  When will I return to watch the Zhejiang tide?

  With straw sandals and a broken bowl no one recognizes me.

  Which cherry blossom bridge am I stepping over?

  10

  Facing the wall for nine years, I was enlightened about emptiness

  and appearance. Returning home with my monk's staff2 I regretted having met you. I'm sorry that I have disappointed you so much. I can only let others be the zither under your fingers.3

  To the Zither Player

  (Three Poems)

  1

  Let moth eyebrows covet my Zen heart;

  to a Buddha, love and loathing are the same.

  In my bamboo hat and palm-bark rain cape I'm gone;

  I do not love and I do not hate anyone.

  2

  I detest blossoms and willows in mist.

  After drifting in the East Sea for twenty years,

  having purged all love, all empty forms and colors,

  by Pipa Lake I sleep with a sutra for a pillow.

  3

  I stole a taste of dew from a celestial beauty's lips.

  Now I keep wiping my eyes against wind.

  Each day missing you makes me age faster.

  What can I do? My lonely window holds twilight.

  1 ”Spring Drizzle” is a famous sad song for the vertical flute.

  2 The monk's staff is called the “khakkhara” and is known as an “alarm staff” because it is covered with metal rings that jingle. In this way Buddhist monks can scare off predators when they travel and warn small creatures of their approach so that they won't be stepped on. The khakkhara is often depicted in the hands of Buddhas and bodhisattvas in Buddhist art.

  3 The last line is from Huang Jun's lyric song “yijiangnan”: “my wish in life, to be a zither producing music—I can get close to the slender fingers of a beauty, and sing in the lap of her silk skirt—even if I have to die it will be great.”

  FROM MODERN TO CONTEMPORARY

  (1911-Present)

  CHINESE LITERATURE IN THE MODERN ERA HAD TO CONTEND with the reality of a century of political upheaval and regular warfare, the humiliating influence of Western colonial powers and an expansionist Japan, and the end of the imperial order with the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911. Under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's United League, rebel groups enlisted the aid of army officers and put an end to Manchu rule. A settlement was negotiated with the head general of the Manchus, Yuan Shikai, in which Yuan would become president and arrange for the abdication of the Qing emperor. Yuan was elected president in 1912 by a revolutionary council in Nanjing, and thus the Republic of China was born.

  Yuan Shikai was not at heart a democratic leader. After a series of power struggles, Sun Yat-sen fled to Japan, and Yuan dissolved parliament and became a dictator. During World War I he attempted to restore the monarchy and crown himself king. Revolts spread around the country. Yuan, having lost control of much of his empire, died in 1916 of natural causes, and China fractured into many small powers, entering an era of competing warlords. Sun Yat-sen established a base in the south and vied for power with warlords to the north. He had founded the Nationalist Party (the Guomindang) in 1912 from the remains of his old United League, but it had been suppressed by Yuan Shikai. It resurfaced after Yuan Shikai's death and became the most important player in the struggle to unite China and expel foreign invaders. It was joined in this effort by another young party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which grew out of the radical May Fourth Movement and began to spread in the 1920s.

  In 1923 Sun Yat-sen allowed CCP members to join his Nationalist Party. The Communists did so but maintained a separate identity within the party. Sun Yat-sen died of cancer in 1925, before he could achieve his dream of a unified China. A split developed between the conservative and radical factions of his party, culminating in the expulsion of the Communists by Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist army and the head of state as of 1928. Chiang Kai-shek focused on battling the Communists, but when war broke out with the Japanese in 1937 he made an alliance with the Communists against the foreign invaders. Following the war with the Japanese, a civil war broke out between the Nationalists and Communists, resulting in the establishment of a Communist state in 1949. Chiang and his followers fled to Taiwan, where they established a riv
al state.

  There were parallel developments in Chinese literature and education. The elimination of the civil service examination system in 1905 led to a new educational movement, with thousands of Chinese pursuing a modern education in Japan, the United States, and Europe. In 1911 an educational system based on the American model was instituted. Modern schools spread across China, as did modern ideas promulgated by the new intellectuals, whose radical rethinking of Chinese culture came together in the New Culture Movement. Inspired by Enlightenment principles of equality, liberty, and dispassionate scientific inquiry, as well as by socialism and anarchism, they sought ways of making China strong in the face of Western imperialism. Important intellectual journals of the time included New Youth and New Tide, which celebrated literature written in the vernacular. In a key essay (“Some Modest Proposals,” 1917), Hu Shi called for the elimination of allusion, parallelism, imitation of the ancients, and clichéd and formal language and advocated writing in “vulgar diction,” arguing that “It is preferable to use the living words of the twentieth century than the dead words of three millennia past.” This literary revolution freed Chinese writers from the restrictions of classical Chinese forms and produced a literature in what was called “plain speech” writing that was readily comprehensible to Chinese readers. Chinese intellectuals devoured translations of Western literature and attempted to adapt Western themes, forms, and techniques to writing in Chinese.