Chinese Poem: "Snow River" 江雪 Jiang Xue | Tang Dynasty Poet Liu Zongyuan | Learn Chinese Now

Qian Shan Niao Fei Jue Wan Jing Ren Zong Mie Gu Zhou Suo Li Weng Du Diao Han JIang Xue Hey guys welcome to Learn Chinese Now ! I'm your host Jared Madsen and today we have a Tang Dynasty poem by Liu Zongyuan. The poem is called Jiang Xue, River Snow. Now we'll get into later why this poem is all about his hatred for eunuchs. Qian Shan, Qian means thousands or thousands. Shan means Mountain. so thousands of mountains around me. Niao Fei Jue Niao means bird, Fei means to fly, and Jue is a very extreme word meaning like totally gone, like vanished. So Qian Shan Niao Fei Jue, of the thousands of mountains around me, all the birds have totally and completely flown away. right, so it's it's setting a very extreme image right at the beginning of the poem the next line down is Wan Jian, Wan is ten thousand so he has now upped himself right, the very first character was thousands, now it's tens of thousands. Wan Jing, Jing is a path so we've gone from thousands of mountains to then tens of thousands of paths so all the paths around me Ren Zong Mie Ren means person, Zong is like a footprint, and Mie is another extreme word that has that means totally destroyed completely gone. so Wan Jing Ren Zong Mie ten thousands of paths, tens of thousands of paths around me the footprints are totally like that's how gone the people are. The people have or they've been gone for so long the footprints aren't even there anymore. So these are the first two lines, really setting this bleak scene. So you can see how this poem balances with each other. the first two characters of both lines are numbers. It starts with thousands and then tens of thousands so he's upped himself, and then the very last characters are Jue and Mie. so both of these again are very extreme. Jue is totally gone, and Mie is totally destroyed. he is upping himself as he goes along. The third line starts with, Gu Zhou Okay so this is interesting, Gu means by yourself alone Zhou is a boat or a canoe something like that a small boat Suo Li Weng, Suo is an older term meaning a raincoat made of .straw so not the nicest of garbs out there, Li is is is the bamboo hat the traditional bamboo hats that we see. Basically he's he's wearing these clothes but they're not, you know, they're not super nice clothes. and then Weng, Weng means kind of like like a man or an older man, oftentimes more maybe you know in this case Suo Li Weng, an old man who's just wearing this this straw raincoat and this bamboo hat, sitting in a canoe by himself. right, Gu Zhou Suo Li Weng. the last line is Du Diao, Du also means by yourself alone, and Diao means to fish. Okay so, he's not only in the canoe by himself right so you have Gu and Du both of those basically mean the same thing. It's kind of like what he did with the first two lines of Qian and Wan what so he's kind of upped himself he's like so many like, the first the first two lines are you know everything's gone like it's just this extreme of everyone's gone and then he's setting the scene of him being by himself right and then Du Diao. Du means alone, Diao means to fish Han Jiang Xue okay so Han means cold and it's not just cold, it's really cold right uncomfortably cold . Jiang Xue is the same as the title of the poem, Jiang means River, Xue means snow so he's sitting in a boat all by himself wearing his tattered clothes, fishing in the cold and on this River and it's snowing that's the whole poem. it's basically this bleak situation of him just sitting there or somebody sitting there by themselves. So we have to think why did he write this poem? Well back in the year 805, he joined this, wasn't really a rebellion it was more like this reform and the reform was basically they thought that the eunuchs in the palace had too much power and the military on the outskirts of the country also had too much power and they just wanted to kind of get things balanced out. Very quickly, all the people around him, like, this this whole reform was immediately kind of, we're not we're totally not doing that, we like the way that we're doing it. zso everybody all the people around him just left, he got exiled for 10 years, and his 10 years he's writing this poem. From one level we can tell this is his feeling of you know, hey I I'm trying to do this reform, I'm with all these people and then everybody right, the birds all fly away, the paths, you can't see the footprints anymore and I'm sitting in the canoe by myself fishing, I'm trying to do my thing but you know everybody has ditched me. a lot of times though, they will, people will look at this poem, and this is also not just for him, this is for anyone who stands up for what they believe. They're often left alone that's kind of what what I see as this poem is expressing right it's if you stand up for something that you truly believe in people around you might leave and you might end up by yourself in a boat fishing in the cold. that's sometimes how it is. At least it was for Liu Zongyuan that's that's what happened to him. To see traditional Chinese culture come to life on stage, I welcome you to join me at a ShenYun performance, the world's top classical Chinese Dance Company. you can also see they have music and videos online at shenyuncreations.com I will leave links to both of those websites in the description below.