Chinese Poem: "Ascending Happy Travel Plateau" 登樂遊原 - Tang Dynasty Poet Li Shangyin

Hey guys welcome to Learn Chinese Now, I am your host Jared Madsen. and today we have a poem from the great Tang Dynasty poet Li ShangYin this poem is called Deng means to ascend Le means happiness You means to travel but like in a happy fun playful way and Yuan means plateau. Le You Yuan is the name of this Plateau the happy travel vacation plateau. this plateau was located just outside the Tang Dynasty capital of Chang An and today that is the modern city of Xi'an. Back in the day, during the Tang Dynasty, all the poets and the scholars and and anybody who wanted to relax, they would head up, they would ascend to this plateau, and you could overlook the city, you could see very far, and it was just kind of a vacation spot, hundreds of Tang Dynasty poems were written there, it's just this great inspiration cool relaxing place, so let's dive into the poem. The first line of the poem begins Xiang means moving towards, Wan means late or evening. So it's getting late Yi means mind to think, Bu means not and Shi means comfortable. Yi Bu Shi means I'm feeling, I'm feeling a little not comfortable, I'm feeling a little vexed. so the whole line It's getting late but you know what, I'm not really feeling it, I feel, I feel stress on my mind. I feel a little, I feel a little uncomfortable. The next line is Qu means to ride Che means a vehicle, so in this case it would mean a cart basically a horse driven cart. So I'm, I'm taking a ride in a horse-driven cart. Deng, like in the title of the poem it means to ascend Gu means ancient and Yuan, also in the title, means plateau. So ascending the ancient plateau. so the whole line I'm getting on a cart and I'm heading up to the old plateau right, the old hangout spot that's where I'm going because it's getting late and I feel a little bit vexed. The third line is Xi means when the sun is in the west, when the Sun is setting Yang means Sun. a side note here, is oftentimes dictionaries will put that as Xi first tone, but in Taiwan they say Xi Yang, fourth tone. Xi Yang the Western Sun, Wu means to not have, Xian means limits, Hao means good. so Limitless goodness right, So Xi Yang, the Setting Sun Wu Xian Hao is amazing it's there there's no bounds to how great it is. The last line though, begins with oh, Zhi, but only Shi, is. right, it's only that right, the last line begins with it's only that, Jin means close or approaching, Huang means yellow, and Hun means dusk. so the last two characters are often used together that just means dusk right, the yellow dusk right, when it's, when it's dust out, there are many colors in the sky, so instead of just calling that Hun, it's a little more poetic to call it Huang Hun, right, the beautiful colorful dusk. right so the last line it's only that dusk is, is coming close. we could understand this poem simply on the surface, where, you know, we, we have the poet, and he's like ah you know it's, it's getting late in the afternoon, I'm not really feeling it today, you know what, I'm gonna take the cart up to the old Happy Travel Plateau, I'm gonna hang out for a little bit, I'm gonna watch the sun, I'm gonna see the beautiful colors, it's so amazing up there, and you know, but then it's gonna be night, and, and the party's gonna be over. but, as we have seen with other Tang Dynasty poems, it usually doesn't end at that. So what is the second layer of this poem mean? Well we have to look at when the poem was written. The poem was written somewhere in between 844 to 845. Now this is during the Tang Dynasty, but it's during the middle, towards, kind of getting close to the end of the Tang Dynasty. the Tang Dynasty was considered the, the dynasty of culture, right, it brought so much culture to China. so basically what he's seeing here is he, Li Shang Yin is kind of, he's a little bit, he's smart enough to kind of look into the future. He knows, that when stuff gets really great, when it gets really amazing, it's probably not going to continue. Probably going to start to go down. and so that kind of would explain why he's vexed. it's the first line of the poem is right it's getting late. it's getting late in the day, it's also getting late in the dynasty. right, this is the afternoon of the Dynasty, and so he's kind of feeling a little bit vexed because he knows night is going to come. So basically, good things don't last. If you have any other poems that you would like me to go over, any other cultural, whatever we can, we can dive into and, and explore, please leave those in the comments below,