Yue Fu and Old Poems

THE CHINESE "MIDDLE AGES": PERIOD INTRODUCTION
The great Chinese empire of late antiquity, the Han, reached

its height during the long reign of Emperor Wu (140-87 B.C.).
The central government had effectively broken the power of the
Han feudal lords, and Han armies were waging successful cam-
paigns in Central Asia against the Xiong-nu kingdom. In the
reigns that followed Emperor Wu/ however, imperial power
gradually weakened, leading finally to the usurpation of the
throne by Wang Mang, who ruled over the brief Xin ("New")
Dynasty (A.D. 9-23). Wang Mang tried to push through an am-
bitious program of political and cultural reforms, but in doing
so, he stirred opposition from powerful interestsall over the em-
pire. The most serious problem for Wang Mang, however, arose
from the shift of the course of the Yellow River. The ensuing
floods and agricultural dislocation in what was then China's
major population center led to large-scale famine. The gov-
ernment was unable to cope with the extent of the disaster, and
a huge peasant revolt was initiated by the Red Eyebrows, so-
called because the rebels painted red on their foreheads to dis-
tinguish themselves from imperial troops. Several of Wang
Mang's armies were defeated, and asthe Red Eyebrows spread,
regional armies were raised to oppose Wang Mang's armies and
the government. From one such army came l.iu Xiu, a minor
descendant of the Han imperial house, who, after Wang Mang's
armies were defeated, was declared the emperor Guang-wu of
the restored Han Dynasty in A.D. 25. Liu Xiu was far from the
only claimant to the throne, and the next decade saw a series
of civil wars from which Liu Xiu emerged victorious.
In the course of Emperor Guang-wu's rise, the Red Eye-
brows had occupied and devastatedthe capital, Chang-an. The
new emperor subsequently moved the capital east to Luo-yang,
and thus the restored dynasty came to be known as the Eastern
Han. Although the Eastern Han survived for almost two cen-
turies, it never recovered the power of the first half of the dy-
nasty, subsequently known as the Western Han. In the capital,
powerful families formed factions that competed for central
government positions, and in the provinces regional autonomy
grew.
Aware of the greater military and political power of their
Western Han predecessors, Eastern Han rulers and intellectu-
als sought to distinguish their own period by its observance of Confucian values. Dur-
ing the course of the Western Han, Confucianism had come to play an increasingly
important role as the ideological basis of the state; by the Wang Mang regime and
the Eastern Han, Confucianism and the imperial system had become inseparable.
For reasonsof state or personal bel ief, later emperors might offer lavish patronage to
221
Anthology of Chinese Literature
Daoism or Buddhism, but the state itself could not be conceived apart from Confu-
cianism (although in the thirteenth century the Mongols briefly attempted to do so).
Although there was nothing in the Han like a true Confucian orthodoxy, the in-
creasing importance of the Confucian Classics to political life intensified the need
to reconcile variant texts and interpretations. Schools of classical scholarship were
roughly divided between "New Text" and "Old Text." The "New Text" schools were
so called because they supposedly represented oral transmission of texts and com-
mentaries on the Confucian Classics, which, after the burning of the books in the
Qin, were written down in the reformed script after the establishment of the Han.
The "Old Text" school primarily represented written texts recovered after the Han.
The difference between the "New Text" and "Old Text" schools was, however, more
profound than simply textual lineages of the Confucian Classics. The "New Text"
schools represented an older style of Confucian learning, based on personal trans-
mission of texts and interpretation by a master whose authority would be traced in
unbroken successionback to the disciples of Confucius. Though the "New Text" clas-
sics and their interpretations were written down, they remained very much schools
in which students studied one particular classic under the masterand simply repeated
the authoritative interpretation of the master.
The "Old Text" schools included scholastic lineages such asthat of the Mao Clas-
sic of Poetry, yet the very idea of the "Old Text" classics was based on a break in
the personal transmission of the Confucian Classics and the ability of later scholars
to offer interpretations from written texts. Wang Mang was a strong supporter of the
"Old Text," and although "New Text" scholarship enjoyed a brief revival in the early
Eastern Han, the "Old Text" schools gradually emerged triumphant. Their success
was due in no small part to their dissemination among private scholars, who felt con-
fident in working with written texts and drawing their own conclusions rather than
relying on the authority of a master. Out of this tradition, comparison and determi-
nation of authoritative versions of the texts of the Confucian Classics conti nued
through the Eastern Han; and in A.D. 175, under state sponsorship, texts of the so-
called Five Classics were carved in stone and set up outside the Imperial Academy
in Luo-yang so that students would have authoritative versions of the classics from
which to study.'
In the Western Han, poetic expositions (fu) had been one of the primary forms
of court literary entertainment. These poetic expositions were long, rhymed de-
scriptions that made use of a rich vocabulary; those declaimed in court were usu-
ally direct or indirect panegyrics of imperial power, though often including en-
couragement to restraint. Emperor Wu's court poet Si-rna Xiang-ru (179-117 B.C.)
praised the emperor as "The Great One" (see p. 182), an adept Daoist who mar-
shaled the forces of the cosmos and rode to transcendence. Si-rnaXiang-ru also wrote
a famous poetic exposition describing the imperial hunting park, naming the flora
and fauna from all over the empire that had been gathered there. In his younger days,
the writer and intellectual Yang Xiong (53 B.C.-A.D. 18) had similarly praised the hunts
and ceremonies of Emperor Wu's successors, but in the writing of his later years,
"These were the Classic of Poetry, the Classic of Documents, the Classic of Changes, the Yifi (one
of the ritual books), and The Springs and Autumns [of LuJ.
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The Chinese "Middle Ages"
readers witness some of the changes in public values that were occurring as the East-
ern Han approached. Yang Xiong renounced the poetic expositions of his youth on
the grounds that they encouraged imperial extravagance and failed in what he saw
as their primary purpose, which was to offer moral guidance to the emperor. Fol-
lowing in the tradition of Yang Xiong, the public literature of the EasternHan often
tended to Confucian moralizing.
As a genre, poetic exposition continued to be important throughout the Eastern
Han, and it came to be used informally as a demonstration of education and talent
by young men seeking appointment in the central government. Such use of literary
composition in the appointment process outlasted the Eastern Han; eventually, it be-
came fully institutionalized in the examination system of the seventh century.
State Confucianism was only a thin layer of elite ideology, beneath which lay a
complex world of popular religion and cults of esoteric knowledge. Confucianism
itself came to be permeated by such beliefs from the Western Han on. Han rulers
placed particular faith in prognostication by omens, and though the Confucian Clas-
sics themselves offered Iittle support for such practices, there was an extensive body
of Confucian apocrypha promising the esoteric knowledge for which many Han in-
tellectuals hungered. Huang-Lao Daoism went much further than esoteric Confu-
cianism, offering techniques of yoga and alchemy by which the adept could refine
his physical being and altain immortality. Huang-Lao Daoism gradually developed
a large following among the populace, and it was spread in cults headed by charis-
matic leaders with messianic pretensions. In A.D. 184, the weakened Han state was
shaken by two almost simultaneous cult uprisings in different parts of the country:
the Yellow Turbans and the "Five Pecks of Rice." These military-religious commu-
nities defeated imperial armies and established local kingdoms in the disintegrating
empire.
In addition to the uprisings of the Daoist cults, the last decades of the second
century saw local generals with independent armies establishing themselves as re-
gional powers. One general, Dong Zhuo, took advantage of factional fighting in the
capital in 189 and seized the emperor Xian; he then plundered and burned Luo-yang,
driving its inhabitants west to reestablish the capital in Chang-an. A year later, Dong
Zhuo was himself killed by his officers, Chang-an was sacked, and the empire coi-
lapsed into total anarchy. Emperor Xian, providing the weak aura of Han legitimacy,
passed from one warlord to another until he came into the hands of Cao Cao
(155-220), who was gradually establishing his position as the preeminent military
leader in North China.
By the early third century, the weaker warlords had fallen by the wayside and
the former empire was divided into the "Three Kingdoms" that give their name to
the period. In the West was the Shu-Han Kingdom, ruled by a remote descendant
of the Han imperial house; in the South along the Yangzi River was the Kingdom of
Wu, whose river fleet protected it against invasion; and in the North was Cao Cao,
proclaimed "King of Wei," but not emperor. In holding Emperor Xian as his puppet,
Cao Cao kept alive the fiction of the Han Dynasty; but on Cao Cao's death in 220,
his son, Cao Pi, deposed the emperor and proclaimed himself emperor of the new
Wei Dynasty.
The heirs of Cao Pi proved to be far less able than either Cao Cao or Cao Pi, and
223
the Wei soon came under the domination of the powerful Si-ma family. The Wei
was still nominally in existence when Northern armies incorporated the Shu-Han
Kingdom in 263, but in 265 the Si-ma family deposed the Caos, just as the Caos had
deposed the Han emperor less than half a century earlier. With this began the lin
Dynasty, which in 280 at last conquered the Kingdom of Wu and briefly reunified
China.
The gradual dissolution of Han power in the second half of the second century
and the constant warfare of the Three Kingdoms proved to be one of the most fer-
tile and transformative periods in Chinese literature. The long reign of the ill-fated
Emperor Xian, from 196 to 220, was known as the [ian-an, and it gave its name to
the literature of the period. Older forms such as poetic exposition continued to be
written, but their range expanded to include topics from everyday life. At the same
time, popular song and a new form of classical poetry in the five-syllable line were
adopted by well-known literary men. Unlike the poetic exposition, classical poetry
was a genre that invited accounts of personal experience and expression of private
feeling: the poetry of the [ian-an gave voice to the instability and uncertainty of life
during the period. Cao Cao. himself an accomplished poet, was the great patron of
contemporary writers, who gathered to the relative security of his court. His son and
heir, Cao Pi, was not only a distinguished writer but also composed the first treatise
on literature. A younger son of Cao Cao, Cao Zhi, became the most famous writer
of his day, provoking the jealousy of his older brother.
The intellectual temper of the times had changed profoundly from the public se-
riousness of the first part of the Eastern Han; there was a strong reaction against the
commitment to public life demanded by Confucian ethics. Thinkers such as Wang
Bi (226-249) wrote commentaries on Confucian and Daoist Classics, focusing on
metaphysical issueswithout regard to their social, ethical, or political implications.
Writers and intellectuals were increasingly drawn to the values of private life and
did their best to avoid serving in the government. Those who did serve were often
caught in the constant factional struggles and many were executed. Already in the
mid-third century we see a fascination with eccentricity, accompanied by extrava-
gant gestures rejecting the norms of social behavior. Many such intellectuals were
drawn to alchemy and the Daoist quest for physical immortality.
The messianic Daoists of the late second century were finally defeated militar-
ily, but in their place a Daoist "church" took shape with an organized religious hi-
erarchy, a body of esoteric scriptures, and a large popular following to support it.
In contrast to the atheistic philosophical Daoism of the pre-Qin period, the Daoist
church worshipped a large pantheon of deities organized in celestial bureaucracies
not unlike the imperial government.
Buddhism made its initial appearance in China in the first century A.D., and by
the third century a growing number of missionaries from Central Asia were winning
converts everywhere. In the turmoil of the times, Buddhist doctrines of personal sal-
vation and release from the inevitable suffering of life held great appeal. Sutras, the
Buddhist scriptures, offered a taste of the complexities of Indian philosophy, and
large-scale translation projects demanded a new kind of reflection on the Chinese
language. With Buddhism came a highly developed church and monastic structure
that provided a model for religious Daoism, 8uddhism's chief religious competitor.
224
After only thirty-seven yearsof ruling over a unified China, the lin capital in Luo-
yang fell in 316 to non-Chinese invaders from the North. As "barbarian" armies es-
tablished their hold over North China, many great families fled with their retainers
and possessions south of the Yangzi River, where, in 317, a [in prince, Si-ma Rui,
proclaimed himself the lin emperor. Following the model of the Zhou and Han when
the capital moved east rather than south after dynastic crisis, this came to be known
as the "Eastern [in." For more than two and a half centuries, a succession of Chinese
dynasties ruled the Yangzi River region in a period known as the "Southern Dynas-
ties." During this same period, North China was under the sway of various non-Chi-
nese kingdoms. Thus the period from 317 until the reunification of China under the
Sui in 589 is known as the "Northern and Southern Dynasties."
When viewed by most objective standards, the Southern Dynasties were small,
regional regimes. By far the greater part of the Chinese population still lived in the
North. The Northern Dynasties patronized Buddhism and Confucian scholarship,
and their legacy in religious art can still be seen. But in literature they were pro-
portionally insignificant, and the role of literature in defining Chinese cultural con-
tinuity was such that subsequent agesthought of the Southern Dynasties as the main
lineage linking the Western lin with the great medieval empires of Sui and Tang.
The intellectual concerns of the Wei and Western lin continued to grow during
the Southern Dynasties. Although the state was still understood in Confucian terms,
personal happiness and the experience of the individual or a group of like-minded
friends were considered of greater importance than service to the state. Tao Qian
(365-427) voluntarily renounced his administrative post because he felt that its de-
mands violated his nature, and his poetry celebrated his decision to return to work
his own fields in the farming community that was his home. For others, a stylish ec-
centricity marked the individual's refusal to conform to social customs. Buddhism
spread and flourished in both the North and South, and its monastic communities
provided the means to renounce the secular world altogether. In the South, temples
and monasteries were established deep in the mountains/ and among monks and
laity alike there developed a new appreciation of landscape and natural beauty.
When earlier poets had traveled, it was a means to get from one place to another.
In the fifth century, we begin to find poets undertaking travel for its own sake, wan-
dering through the mountains to appreciate the beauty of nature.
Not only was the overall population of the South much smaller than that of the
North, the emigre ruling house and great families constituted only a small minority
of the Southern population. These emigre families comprised an aristocracy. Edicts
to preserve the purity of Northern bloodlines were soon ignored, but the culture of
the South had become aristocratic. By the late fifth century aristocratic society drew
inward, with literary composition increasingly restricted to the courts of the emperor
and imperial princes in the capital, lian-kang (modern Nanjing). Poems were writ-
ten on the occasion of imperial and princely outings/ and topics for composition
would often be set as a pastime. Literary issueswere debated, in which literary and
political factionalism were closely intertwined. Old song lyrics were carefully con-
served, anthologies of older and contemporary literature compiled, and literary his-
tory undertaken.
Such a fragile world could not last long, and in 549 the rebel Hou ling took [ian-
225
kang and sacked it. The ruling Liang Dynasty eventually put down the rebellion and
recovered the city, but it never fully recovered its political or military power. In the
decades that followed, a new dynasty was installed, the Chen, but the Southern rulers
became puppets of the militarily powerful North. The S80s saw the rise of a pow-
erful new Northern state, the Sui, which first unified the divided kingdoms of the
North and then, in 589, conquered the Chen and reunified the empire.
The Sui instituted a number of institutional and economic reforms that would be
the basis of government for the following centuries, but the Sui itself did not endure
long. The astute first Sui ruler built a sound political structure that was badly mis-
managed and overextended by his successor, Emperor Yang. Indeed, Emperor Yang
moved the Sui capital from Chang-an to one of the great Southern cities, Yang-zhou,
and fell under the spell of the pleasure-loving court culture of the South. Outbreaks
of rebellion occurred all over the country. After less than thirty years, the Sui was
replaced by a new dynasty, the Tang, which would rule China for the next three cen-
turies.
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Yue-fu'
In 120 B.C., a special bureau was established in the Han government to

provide music and songs for state rituals and imperial entertainments. This
bureau was known as the Yue-iu, or "Music Office," and the same term
came to be applied to the lyrics of the songs themselves. The bureau used
not only music and lyrics composed at court and in the office itself but
also lyrics that seemed to have been folk poems. Such use of popular
songs in the court was reminiscent of the "Airs" of the Classic of Poetry,
in which lyrics that originated among the common people found currency
in the regional courts of the Zhou princes. A handful of Western Han
lyrics still survive that probably came from the original institution, the Han
"Music Bureau." Among these are pieces that seem to have originated in
folk poetry, including the two following pieces: a lover's oath of eternal
fidelity and a poem breaking off with an unfaithful lover.
Heaven Above (Western Han yue-fu)

By Heaven above,
I will be your true love,
let it be forever and never wane.
When hills no longer rise,
when the river's water dries,
when winter thunder rolls,
and snow in summer falls,
when sky and earth fuse,
I'll stop loving you.
The One I Love (Western Han yue-fu)

The one I love
is south of the sea.
What gift can I send him?-
'The category of vue-tu, as it has been used for the past millennium, represents a complex histori-
cal aggregation of types of poems. What makes a poem a yue-fu is its title. Although it often sug-
gests the theme of the poem, the title is essentially considered the title of a melody, even if the melody
is long lost. The term yue-fu includes all anonymous poems from before the seventh century writ-
ten to yue-fu titles. Many of these are folk poems. The category also includes all poems by known
writers which use that body of yue-fu titles, as well as poems by known writers to titles that can be
recognized as variations on the original set of pre-seventh-century titles.
227
a hair-clasp of rortoise shell,

set with paired pearls,
and wound all about with jade.
Then I heard that his heart had changed,

I broke it and burned it in a pile,
broke and burned it,
threw the ash to the wind.
From this day on,
no more longing, no more love,
my love for him is done.
When roosters crow and the dogs all bark,

my brother, his wife will know,
tra-Ia-Ia,
the autumn winds howl, the pheasants shrill,
SOonthe east will grow bright
and all will be known.
Some of these Western Han yue-fu recall earlier ritual songs, such as the following
lyric speaking for soldiers who died for an unknown cause in an unknown battle.
This Han song should be compared with the Chu ritual song, "The Kingdom's Dead"
(see p. 161), which also allows those dead in distant battle to speak. Although itdoes
not echo or derive from "The Kingdom's Dead," "South of the Walls We Fought"
serves the same function of allowing the community to acknowledge the bravery
and loyalty of the dead.
South of the Walls We Fought (Western Han yue-fu)

"South of the walls we fought,
north of the ramparts we fell,
fell in the meadows, left unburied,
food for the ravens.
Speak to the ravens for us, say:
we were brave men, far from home,
we fell in the meadows, left unburied,
how can our carrion flee you?"
Where the waters run deep and clear,

the reeds and the rushes are dark:
the horsemen all died in battle,
their tired mounts linger and neigh.
"On the bridge a guardhouse is built-

how can we cross south?
228
how can we cross north?
If the grain is not taken in harvest,
how shall our lord eat?
we want to be loyalliegemen,
but how can this be done?"
"We think on you, good liegemen,

good liegemen should be in our thoughts:
at dawn you went forth to battle,
and at evening did not return."
The original "Music Office" was closed in 6 B.C., but the term yue-fu continued to
be applied to anonymous poems that seem initially to have been folksongs. We have
a considerable body of such poems, probably dating from the Eastern Han in the
first and second centuries A.a. Some such songs, like "East of Ping-ling" below, deal
with the kinds of situations in the lives of the common people that almost never ap-
pear in "high" literature.
East of Ping-ling (Eastern Han?)

East of Ping-ling, the royal tomb,
beech tree, cypress, and pine,
there is someone-I can't say who-
has kidnapped our good lord,
they kidnapped our good lord
right from his own great hall,
the ransom is set at a million coins
and a pair of the swiftest steeds.
A pair of the swiftest steeds
is going to be hard indeed:
I look back and see the wardens coming,
my heart quails and grows cold,
my heart grows cold within,
the blood drains dry,
I go home and tell the kin
that the brown calf must be sold.
In later Chinese song traditions, songs were often performed in sets, with the differ-
ent sections thematically playing off one another. In a few of these Eastern Han yue-
Iu, such as "Prelude: White Swans in Pairs," we have an indication of how such song
sets might have been structured. The opening segment often deals with an animal,
bird, or plant; then a central segment deals with a human situation that is parallel
with or contrasts to the opening segment; finally, there is a conventional coda in
which the singer wishes his audience long life and blessings.
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Prelude: White Swans in Pairs (Eastern Han?)

In pairs white swans came flying,
came flying from the northwest,
five by five and ten by ten,
aU in lines uneven.
Suddenly one was struck sick
and could not fly with the rest.
Every five leagues he looked back once,
every six leagues he lingered.
"I would take you in my beak,
but my beak is shut and won't open;
I would bear you on my back,
but my feathers are broken and faUen."
Great joy comes with first meeting,
then grief, when parted in life.
He faltered and looked round to the flock,
and unawares tears were falling,
As my thoughts fix on parting with you,
the breath in me chokes, I cannot speak.
Let each take care for himself, herself,
the road is far, return will be hard.
And I will stay in my chamber alone,
our gates kept closed and doubly barred.
If you live, we will meet again;
if you die, we will join down below.
Live this day with delight on delight,
Long life to you, ten thousand years.
Many of the anonymous Han yue-fu were probably composed by professional

singers, and they show characteristics of oral composition, such as formulae and
shared lines. In their original form, these anonymous yue-fu were probably not fixed
"texts," but were instead continually changed in each performance until at last
someone wrote one version down and the words became fixed. By a remarkable
accident of preservation, we have the following three versions ofthe same song from
the Eastern Han. As is often the case in English or Scottish ballads, these songs leave
much unsaid. Each version hints at something not stated directly: one brother wrong-
ing another; the young wife not attending to domestic tasks but instead entertaining
someone.
Cocks Crow (Eastern Han?)

Cocks crow in the treetops,
dogs bark deep behind walls,
where is the wanderer heading,
230
....
now that the world is at peace?

Nothing slips past the law,
the wicked meet justice, the helpless get care.
Golden is your gate,
and emerald is your hall,
where flasks of wine are set in pairs,
and Han-dan singers there perform.
Roof tiles of lapis lazuli
appear on roofs of lesser clans.
Behind the rooms a square pool lies,
and in that pool are ducks in pairs,
seventy ducks and two,
all in order, formed in lines,
and when they sing, their sad cries
are heard on the eastern porch of our hall.
Brothers there are, four or five,
all are attendants on the king,
when they come home one day in five,
the roadsides fill with onlookers.
Gold winds round their horses' heads,
gleaming and sparkling fine.
A peach tree grew by an open well,
a pear tree grew by its side:
worms chewed away the peach's roots,
but the pear tree fell in its stead.
A tree will offer itself for another,
but brother forgets brother.
Meeting (Eastern Han?)

We met upon the narrow lanes,
on roads so narrow no coach could pass,
I knew not what young man it was,
wheel to wheel, asked of your home.
Easy is your home to know,
easy to know, hard to forget.
Golden is your gate,
white jade is the hall,
and in the hall are flasks of wine,
and Han-dan singers there perform,
with cinnamon trees in the courtyard
where sparkling lanterns brightly shine.
Brothers there are, two or three,
the second, attendant to the king,
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---------------2
when he comes home one day in five,

the whole roadway fills with light,
gold winds round his horse's head,
and roadsides fill with onlookers.
He enters his gates, he looks around
and sees only ducks in pairs,
seventy ducks and two,
all in order, formed in lines.
and he hears the sound of melodious cries,
cranes sing on porches east and west.
The eldest wife weaves the silken mesh,
the middle wife wea ves the yellow floss,
the youngest wife does nothing at all,
harp in her arm, she mounts the hal1.
"Sit calmly, my lord, and listen a while,
for the play of the strings is not yet done."
Chang-an Has Narrow Alleys (Eastern Han?)

Chang-an has narrow alleys,
alleys so narrow no coach can pass.
I chanced on two young men,
wheel to wheel, I asked of your home.
Y OUf home is beside New Market,
easy to know, hard to forget.
The eldest Son brings in two thousand pecks,
the middle son, constable of the king.
The youngest son has no post at all,
in cap and gown he serves in Luo-yang.
When the three Sons together enter the room,
all through the room a light appears.
The eldest wife weaves silks and linens,
the middle wife weaves the yellow floss,
the youngest wife does nothing at all,
harp in her arm, she mounts the hal1.
"Be still, my lord, and listen a while,
for the play of the strings is not quite done."
Other Voices in the Tradition

later poets often took some striking line or passage from earlier poetry and elaborated
it in a separate poem. In the closing passage of the preceding two versions, we do not
know the full situation, but we do know that there are three brothers and three wives.
Two of the wives are doing what wives should do: they are weaving. The third is doing
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The Chinese"Middle Ages"
something else--entertaining someone she addresses with respect (in the final version
we are told that the youngest brother, her husband, is off in Luo-vang). Poets of the
fifth and sixth centuries could not resist the erotic implications, and they often com-
posed short poems to two new yue-fu titles, liThe Sensual Charms of the Three Wives"
and "The Middle Wife Weaves the Yellow Floss,"echoing the endings of the songsabove.
Shen Yue (441-513), The Sensual Charms of the Three Wives
The eldest wife wipes off boxes of jade,

the middle wife knots beaded curtains,
but the youngest wife does nothing at all,
she fixes her brows in the mirror.
"Lie quietly, love, just for a while-
later ronight we'll do private things."
When enthusiasts began to collect folksongs and ballads in England and Europe in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they would often "improve" them, revis-
ing passages and leaving out segments that seemed "garbled" or "corrupt." In more
recent times, scholars have recognized that such incongruous elements are a nat-
ural part of folksong traditions, which do not follow the same rules as the literature
of the elite. We have a fine example of this in two versions of the Eastern Han(?)
"Song of White Hair." One version is included in the "Treatise on Music/' part of
an official history compiled in the late fifth century; this treatise preserves many of
the best Han yue-fu and seems to represent the transcription of singers' repertoires.
The second version comes from roughly the same period and is found in an early
sixth-century anthology, Recent Songs from a Terrace of Jade (Yu-tai xin-yong),
which included many yue-fu. Like the European folksong collectors of the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, the editor of Recent Songs from a Terrace of Jade
seems to have "fixed" some of the yue-fu. In his version of "Song of White Hair,"
the editor regularizes the stanzas and omits passagesthat seem incongruous, creat-
ing a coherent lyric of a woman breaking off with a faithless man. The sections in
the original version that are omitted in the "literary" version are given in italics below.
Song of White Hair (Eastern Han?)
As bright as the snow on mountaintop,

as clear as the moon between clouds,
I have heard that you love another,
I have made up my mind to break it off.
We have both lived our lives in this city,

but when have we met with a flask of wine?
We meet today with a flask of wine,
then tomorrow at dawn, by the royal moat,
we'll linger there by the royal moat,
where the water flows off east and west.
233
•
There's a woodcutter east of the city,

there's a woodcutter west of the city too;
both woodcutters heave together-
with no friends for whom can I show off?
Sad and dreary, sad and dreary,
when a woman marries, she should not cry,
I wanted a man with a faithful heart,
till white hair came, never to part.
The bamboo pole bends with the strike,
The fish's tail flips violently.
In a man value true feeling;
money is no use at all.
A horse is chomping at the hay,
and on the river great gentry play.
Live this day with delight on delight,
Long life to you, ten thousand years.
The following two songs treat roughly the same theme--a man approaches a beau-
tiful young woman and his advances are rebuffed-in very different ways. The sec-
ond of these songs is attributed to an otherwise unknown figure, XinYan-nian, prob-
ably a professional singer of the EasternHan. The motif bears interesting comparison
to the poetic exposition "The Goddess" (see p. 190), in which the poet meets the
goddess and is rejected just before they consummate their love.
Mulberries by the Path (Eastern Han?)

Sunrise in southeast
shines on the halls of our house of Qin,
and the house of Qin has a lovely girl
whose name, they say, is Luo-fu,
Luo-fu is skilled with silkworms
she picks mulberry leaves south of the wall.
The straps of her basket are of blue silk,
its handle, a branch of cinnamon;
Her hair has a trailing ponytail,
in her ears are bright moon pearls.
Her skirt below is saffron damask,
of purple damask, her vest above.
When passers-by see Luo-fu, they
drop their loads and stroke their beards;
when young men see Luo-fu,
their hats fall off and their headbands show.
Men at the plow forget the share;
men with the hoe forget the hoe,
~-----------_.
234
when they go home there's always a fight,

all because of seeing Luo-fu.
From the south the lord governor came,
and he halted his five-horse team;
the lord governor's sent a runner
to find out who that maiden is:
"The house of Qin has a lovely girl
whose name, we shall say, is Luo-fu."
"And just how old is this Luo-fu?"
"Not yet up to twenty,
and just beyond fifteen."
The governor invites Luo-fu:
"Now will you ride with me?"
Luo-fu came forward and said these words:
"The lord governor's a foolish man:
the lord governor has his own wife;
I, Luo-fu, have my man.
In the east are a thousand riders and more,
and my husband is head of them all.
How can you tell who my husband is?-
he rides a white horse, a black colt behind,
the horse's tail is wound in blue silk,
and gold is the halter on its head,
at his waist is a wound-pommel sword,
worth perhaps a million or more.
At fifteen he was a county runner,
by twenty, a great lord at court,
by thirty, in the Emperor's entourage,
by forty, the master of a city.
His skin is smooth, his skin is white,
his beard is wispy and long,
he walks with slow pace through the courts,
with stately steps he goes through the hall.
There are thousands that dine at his board,
and all of them say how grand he is!"
Xin Yan-nian, Officer of the Guard (Eastern Han)

A bondsman of the house of Huo,
Feng by name, Feng Zi-du,
hid behind the Lord General's power
and trifled with the Turkish tavern girl.
Fifteen was the Turkish maid,
alone at the bar one day in spring,
a long-hung skirt, twined-ribbon sash,
235
billowing sleeves, acacia vest.

On her head she wore Lan-tian jade,
in her ears she wore pearls from Rome,
her hair in two buns was so lovely
there was nothing like them in the world:
one bun was worth five million in gold,
and the two together, more than ten.
"I never expected this dashing guard
to stop by our tavern so gallantly,
his silver saddle sparkling,
his blue-covered coach waiting empty."
And he comes to me wanting clear wine:
1 brought him a rope-handled jug.
And he comes to me wanting fine things to eat;
a golden plate with carp fillet.
And he gives me a green bronze mirror
and grabs hold of my skirts of red gauze.
1'1 don't care if my red gauze gets torn,
such cheap treatment is what 1 expect:
a man always wants a new woman,
but a woman values the man she has;
in human life there are new things and old,
the highborn do not mix with the low.
No thank you, officer of the guard,
private love isn't worth it."
By the end of the Eastern Han, in the last part of the second century A.D., literary
men began to write poems in the spirit of the anonymous vue-iu, and these too came
to be known as yue-fu. Yue-fu became important as a kind of poetry in which a poet
could speak not in his own voice but as a character type: the abandoned woman,
the frontier soldier, the young nobleman. The settings of literary yue-fu are imagi-
nary scenes, such as Chen Lin imagining the following exchange between a con-
script laborer on the frontier and his wife.
Chen Lin (d. 217), I Watered My Horse at a Spring by the Wall

1 watered my horse at a spring by the Wall
with water so cold my horse hurt in its bones.
They went to the bess-man beside the Great Wall,
saying,
"Don't keep us Tai-yuan lads long past our time."
"Let's keep the state work on schedule, boys,
so lift your mallets to the rhythm of the sound."
"Better for a man to die fighting
than bear pounding earth to build the Great Wall."
236
--------------- A
And the Great Wall keeps stretching on and on,

on and on three thousand miles.
There's many a stout lad on the frontier,
and many a wife alone at home.
I wrote a letter to my wife:
"Better find another mao,
don't you wait for me;
be good to your new man's family,
just now and then remember me."
A letter came back to the frontier land,
said, "What's this foolishness you're telling me?"
"Since I've got troubles, why should I
try to hold down a woman no blood-kin of mine?
If you have a boy, don't raise him,
if you have a girl, feed her well.
If you could only see how it is by the Wall,
with the bones of dead men stacked in a pile ... "
"They dressed my hair as a woman

and I went to be your wife,
now my heart knots with misery;
I see well how you suffer on the frontier,
and I don't think I'll be long for life."
After the Han, yue-fu became a very broad category of poetry, encompassing all
anonymous popular songs as well as literary works done in what different ages saw
as the "spirit" of the original yue-fu.
Yue-fu of the South

A type of anonymous popular song very different from the old Han yue-fu flourished
south of the Yangzi River from the third through the fifth centuries. These were mostly
quatrains, with many different lyrics made to a single title that probably represented
a song or melody type. Some of the song types seem to have been sung only by
women, while others allowed either a male or a female voice. These short lyrics are
mostly love songs, some movingly direct in their simplicity and others witty and mis-
chievous. They make heavy use of a small group of puns, including: lian, "lotus" or
"passion": si, "silk," "thread," or "longing"; QU, "lotus root" and "mate"; and pi, "bolt"
[of cloth] and "match." These popular songs came to have a great influence on the
formation of the literary quatrain.
Such songs became very popular with the aristocrats of the Southern court, and
in the early sixth century, choruses of women were imported into the palace and
trained to perform them. The largest and most famous group of these quatrains are
known as the "Zi-ye Songs," Zi-ye being a term for "midnight," and supposedly the
name of a famous courtesan of the mid-fourth century. Most of the Zi-ye Songs are
237
in a woman's voice, but the first two seem to form a dialogue between a man and
a woman.
Zi-ye Songs
I-II
"I went out the gates at sunset,
and glimpsed you passing by.
Enchanting features, tresses fetching,
a sweet scent filled all the road."
"The sweet scent was made by perfume,
enchanting features I cannot claim.
But Heaven won't thwart a person's desire,
and on purpose it let me see you."
XII
At dawn I long to go out the gates,
at dusk I long to go back to the isles.
I'll laugh and chat with anyone,
but my heart in secret thinks of you.
XVI
My love was taken by another,
he betrayed me more than one time.
I opened the door, didn't set the bar,
which is to say: "Close no more."
No. XVI is a punning quatrain. The open door ("Close no more") is wu fu xiang gusn.
both "not locked any more" and "I'll have nothing to do with you any more." Of
course, the open door also suggeststhe woman's availability for a new lover.
XIX
When my love is sad, I'm also down;
when my man laughs, I'm happy too.
Have you never seen two trees entwined:
from different roots shared branches rise?
XX
I was moved by how loving you were at first,
now I sigh how distant and cold you've grown.
Pound out gold leaf on a tortoise shell-
all glitter outside, nothing deep within.
XXIII
Who can feel longing and not sing out?
Who can be starving and not eat?
The sun grows dark, I lean by the door,
so upset that I can't help thinking of you.
238
•
XXIV
I held my dress, not tying the sash,
I painted my brows and went to the window.
My gauze skirt is easily whirled by the breeze-
if it opens a bit, just blame the spring wind.
XXXIII
The night lasted on, I could not sleep,
and the moonlight shone so bright.
I thought I heard my true love call,
and I wasted an answering "Yes!" to the sky.
XXXVI
I am that star at the Dipper's end
that never shifts in a thousand years.
My lover's heart is like the sun,
in the east at dawn, at dusk turning west.
The Zi-ye Songs of the Four Seasons

Spring Songs
VI
The cuckoo is singing in the bamboo,
plum blossoms fall, filling the road.
Girls seeking pleasure roam in spring moonlight.
their gauze skirts trail through fragrant grass.
IX
Skirt of gauze, tight red sleeves,
hairpin of jade and full-moon earrings.
Roaming for pleasure, I walk the spring dew,
wanton and seeking a like-hearted man.
X
Flowers so lovely in the spring groves,
the mood so sad of birds in spring.
Then the spring breeze, so full of desire,
blows open wide my skirts of gauze.
Winter Songs
XIII
Where will we tie our true-love-knot?-
under the cypress of Western Mound.
Windswept and bare, no shelter there,
and the hard frosts will freeze me to death.
There seems to have already been a culture of romance in which extempore qua-
trains were exchanged, using simple rhymes, stock images, and repeated lines. Lines
239
•
',---------------------LIdIIII
from this strange, dark quatrain reappear in another quatrain from the same period,
dubiously attributed to the famous courtesan "Little Su."
I ride the coach with polished sides,

my love rides a dark mottled horse.
Where will we tie our true-love-knot?-
under pine and cypress of Western Mound.
Such anonymous quatrain lyrics often show an erotic directness that is rare in early
Chinese poetry. No one knows what the tune title Yan Pan-er means; the same lyric
is also included with a group of lyrics to another melody, Du-qu, which may mean
"solo song."
Yang Pan-er (also Du-qu Song)

I happened to go out before White Gate
where the willows can hide the crows.
My love is the aloeswood incense,
and I am the brazier where it burns.
"White Gate" was one of the gates of the Southern capital Iian-kang. Crows are not
the only things that can be hidden by the dense and low-hanging fronds of willow
trees. Judging by the smoking metaphor in the second couplet, the singer here had
better luck than the lover who waited by the willows in the Classic of Poetry CXL
(see p. 40).
Yue-fu of the Northern Dynasties

From the same period as the Southern yue-fu we also have a small gathering of very
different songs, from the non-Chinese regimes in North China of the fourth to sixth
centuries. These have a stylized masculinity that ever afterward became associated
with "Northern" modes. In contrast to the soft world of the South, the Northern songs
are haunted by death and violence. While it seems probable that many of these songs
were indeed originally from the North, they were for the most part preserved in
Southern sources and collections, and represented, either by selection or modifica-
tion, a southerner's idea of what typical "Northern" poetry should sound like.
Qi-yu Songs (Northern Dynasties yue-fu)

I
A man should act with daring,
many friends he does not need.
The hawk goes flying through the sky,
wrens surge away on either side.
240
IV
A man is a pathetic bug:
once out his gate, he fears his death:
a corpse that rots in a narrow ravine,
white bones rhat none will gather and bury.
Song of the Prince of Lang-ya (Northern Dynasties yue-fu)

I jusr bought a five-foot sword,
from the central pillar I hang it.
I stroke it rhree times a day-
better by far rhan a maid of fifteen.
In the fourth to sixth centuries, the long anonymous yue-fu narrative ballads of the
Eastern Han were no longer written in the Southern Dynasties, but they did survive
in the North. Below is the famous Northern ballad of a girl, Hua Mu-Ian, taking the
place of her father in militaryservice. The rulers of the Northern Dynasties were non-
Chinese. Note that the ruler is not only referred to by the Chinese title of Emperor
but by the non-Chinese title of Khan.
The Ballad of Mu-lan (Northern Dynasties yue-fu,

4th-6th century)
T5k, tsk, and tsk, tsk,
Mu-lan weaves by her window.
We cannot hear the shuttle's sound,
we only hear the girl's sighs.
"Now tell me, girl, who's on your mind,
and tell me, girl, who's in your heart?"
"There's no one on my mind at all,
and no one in my heart.
"Last night I saw conscription lists,

the Khan is calling troops everywhere.
The army's rolls were in twelve scrolls,
and every scroll had Father's name.
"My father has no older son,

Mu-lan has no big brother.
I wish to go buy horse and gear
and march to the wars for Father."
In the east mart she bought a fine steed,

in the west mart bought blanket and saddle.
241
In the north matt she bought a long whip,

in the south mart bought bit and bridle.
At dawn she took her parents' leave,

by the Yellow River she camped at dusk.
She did not hear her parents' calls,
she heard only the sounds of the waters
of the Yellow River rolling.
In the morning she left the river,

she came to Black Mountain at dusk.
She did not hear her parents' calls,
she heard only the sad whinnying
from Turkish horsemen on Mount Yan.
She went thousands of miles to battle,

she flew across fortified passes.
The north wind carried the sounds of the watch,
and cold light shone on her armor.
After many a battle the general died,
after ten years the stout troops went home.
She came back and saw the Emperor,

the Emperor sat in his Hall of Light.
Her deeds raised her rank by twelve degrees,
and he gave her a hundred thousand and more.
The Khan then asked her what she wished;
"I've no use to be Grand Secretary.
Just loan me a camel with far-running feet
to carry this lad on its back to home."
When her parents heard that their daughter had come,
they came out of town, leaning each on the other.
When her sister heard that big sister had come,
at the window she made herself up with rouge.
When young brother heard that his sister had come,
he sharpened his knife and got pigs and sheep.
Then she opened the door to her room in the east,
and she sat on her bed in her room in the west.
She took off her buffcoat for battle,
and put on the skin she used ro wear.
At the window she combed her wispy locks,
in the mirror she put on rouge.
Then she went out the gate to see her companions,
and all her companions were struck with surprise.
"We marched together for twelve long years,
and you never knew that Mu-lan was a girl.
242
The male hare's legs have a nervous spring,

the eyes of the girl hare wander;
hut when two hares run side by side,
who can tell if I'm boy or girl?"
As in many other song traditions, lines and segments reappear in different places,
often in very different contexts. The opening of "The Ballad of Mu-ian" returns in a
group of Northern Dynasties quatrains, in the voice of a more conventional yue-fu
heroine who is thinking about getting married.
Breaking the Branches of Willows (Northern Dynasties yue-fu)

I
A date tree grows before my gate,
year after year it never gets old.
If Mother does not have me married,
how will she get a grandson to hold?
II
Tsk, tsk, and woe is me,
the girl weaves at the window.
We cannot hear the shuttle's sound,
we only hear the girl's sighs.
III
"Now tell me, girl, what's on your mind,
and tell me, girl, what's in your heart?"
"Mother promised to have me married,
and this year again there's no good news."
Other Voices in the Tradition:

The Later Lineages ofYue-fu
Once a yue-fu such as "South of the Walls We Fought" (p. 228) was established, later poets
might compose their own versions under the same title. Such poets frequently thought of
themselves as continuing or recreating the mood of the original version, but more often than
not, these later versions only remind us of the profound differences separating later imper-
ial China from the more stark and simple world of the anonymous Han vue-to.
Ofthe great Tang poets, Li Bo (701-762) was the most fascinated by the world of the old
yue-fu, yet the contrast between his version of "South of the Walls We Fought" and the Han
ballad is striking: naming the trouble spots on the Tang frontier and beyond replaces the
nameless battleground of the old ballad; and a political message against war takes the place
of the ritual acknowledgment of the service of the dead soldiers. Note, however, that the
Tang's Central Asian enemies are anachronistically called the Xiong-nu, the great Central
Asian kingdom that fought the Han.
243
Li Bo, SOuth of the Walls We Fought

We fought last year at the Sang-gan's source,
this year we fight on the Cong River road.
We washed weapons in the surf of Tiao-zhi,
grazed horses on grass in Sky Mountain'S snowt
Thousands of miJes ever marching and fighting:
until all the Grand Army grows frail and old.
The Xiong-nu treat slaughter as farmers treat plowing;

since bygone days only white bones are seen
in their fields of yellow sand.
The House of Qin built the wall
to guard against the Turk;
for the House of Han the beacon fires
were blazing still.
Beacon fires bJaze without ceasing,

the marching and battle never end.
They died in fighting on the steppes,
their vanquished horses neigh,
mourning to the sky.
Kites and ravens peck men's guts,
fly with them dangling from their beaks
and hang them high
On boughs of barren trees.
The troops lie mud~smeared in grasses,
and the general acted all in vain.
Now I truly see that weapons
are evil's tools:
the Sage will use them only
when he cannot do otherwise.
During the Song Dynasty 1960-1279), poetry became increasingly rarefied or reflective, char-
acteristic of the sophisticated self-conscious world that was the Song. But in the fourteenth
century, many poets began to look back to the Tang and earlier ages as offering poetic mod-
els of directness and simplicity of feeling that seemed to have answers to the various dis-
satisfactions poets felt with their Own "modern" world. In the Archais! movement of the Ming,
during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we can particularly see a longing for the
roughness and direct force of Han poetry. Ming Archaist poets often imitated the Han bal.
lads, their imitations much admired in their Own time but reviled by critics and poets from
the seventeenth century on for being too derivative. The fOllOWingversion of "South of the
Walls We Fought' shows something of the Ming desire to recapture the original Vitality of
the Han song. In place of the austerity of the Han ballad, however, a "Gothic" excess is now
evident.
'The Sang-gan was a river in northern He-bei where the Tang fought the Khitan. The Ccng River
was in the Pamirs, where the Tang fought the Tibetans. Fiao-zhl was off in Afghanistan, while Sky
Mountain was in Xin-jiang. Together, these locations suggest the campaigns in the North and
Northwest.
244
Wang Shi-zhen (1526-1590), South of the Wall We Fought

South of the wall we fought,
by the ramparts south of the wall,
north of the wall black clouds pressed low.
Troops lay in ambush [0 our east,
while to the west
scattered horsemen harried us.
They gave us no rest.
The brown dust circled us all around.
The sun turned blue-black,

the sky was a blur.
Gongs and drums sounded,
shouting and clamor.
Turkish riders drew back,
then charged swift as a gale.
The trees seemed like weeds,
the grass was sere.
Who is that crying out?-
a father gathering up his son.
A wife asks of her husband,
pikes and armor in piles,
blood covers skulls.
Every household calls back a soul,
every company mourns its own.
Go tell the Lord General,

if the Lord General does not know.
In our lives we were troops of the borders;
why should we grieve to have graves on the steppes?
The food in the pot,
was not cooked at noon.
Too bad!-the hasty alarm came,
then we parted for good,
and never were able to finish our meals.
Over the steppes wind whistles
and with it run our souls.
Can't they glimpse our Lord General,

who sits in the fort with an ivory staff
beneath a great banner?
In his lifetime he'll surely he made a great noble;
and when dead, in his ancestral temple
he will eat his fill.
In these versions, we can see something ofthe operation of the poetic tradition, how earlier
poetry was continually reworked for new circumstances. During the sixteenth century, when
Wang Shi-zhen wrote the version of "South of the Walls We Fought" above, the Ming had
been having major frontier wars with the Mongols. Similarly, the following version by Li Ye-
sl offers a grotesque vision of violence and ravaged cities that would be hard to dissociate
245
from the horrors of the Qing invasion, through which Li Ye-s! lived. The utter collapse of the
Ming armies before the invading Manchus (Qing) and the subsequent destruction of poorly
defended cities could easily be seen as the inversion of the heroic Han ballad, where sol-
diers fought to the death and the community acknowledged their service. Far more than
Wang Shi-zherr's version, li ve-st's version is meant to be read ironically against the origi-
nal Han ballad: the troops flee rather than die, and the speaker addresses "carrion wrens"
rather than ravens.
Li Ye-si (1622-1680), South of the Walls We Fought

South of the walls we fought,
east of the walls we fled,
and though grain grows ripe in the wild,
it will not save our lord.
Whose skeletons are those
strewn scattered in the streets?
Yellow maggots gorge by day,
lairs of faxes appear by night,
right by mattress and pillow.
Yellow maggots are teeming,
blood red rivers streaming;
the old woman shuts the gate and cries,
a young child leans on the door and dies.
I went back home,
all the neighbors were gone,
the kitchen was destroyed.
I took a basket, went out the gate,
arrows were shot at me-
I had wanted to die of starvation,
it seems I won't get my wish.
I turn my head and see wrens,
and say to the wrens-don't flyaway!
Dawn's gaunt flesh will be evening's carrion,
and that will appease your hunger.
The yue-fu romantic quatrains of the South also captured the imagination of later writers.
While the original anonymous Yang Pan-er went as follows:
I happened to go out before White Gate

where the willows can hide the crows.
My love is the aloeswood incense,
and I am the brazier where it burns
the following transformation by the Tang writer li Bo makes the effective simplicity of the
earlier anonymous yue-fu elaborate. As was characteristic of Tang myths, li Bo renders the
scene of singing the song itself as part of the song.
246
The Chinese" Middle Ages"
Li Bo, Yang Pan-er

You were singing Yang Pan-er.
I urged you to drink more Xin-feng beer.
What is it matters most to me?-

the crows that cry in White Gate's willows.
The crows cry hidden in willow flowers,

you grow drunk and stay at my home.
In a mountain-shaped brazier
the aloeswood incense burns,
two columns of smoke form a single vapor
passing the purple wisps of cloud.
As literary men wrote their own versions of the old Han and Southern folk poems, many of
the basic motifs of those poems also took on a different kind of continuity, reappearing in
later lyrics of anonymous singers.
We often find remarkable continuities in the Chinese song tradition, with motifs appear-
ing first in the Classic of Poetry, then in yue-fu, and again in later song up to the twentieth
century. Rather than seeing such continuities as the direct influence of earlier lyrics on later
ones, it is best to think of some of these enduring motifs as recurrent expressions of constant
social functions. For example, given the general fickleness of the human heart, lovers must
swear oaths, as in "Heaven Above," the Western Han song quoted at the beginning of this
section:
By Heaven above,
I will be your true love,
let it be forever and never wane.
When hills no longer rise,
when the river's water dries,
when winter thunder rolls,
and snow in summer falls,
when sky and earth fuse,
I'll stop loving you.
Such lovers' vows appear in later popular songs declaring conditions for separation re-
markably similar to those in the old Han vue-tv. One of the anonymous song lyrics found
in the Tang manuscripts recovered in the Dun-huang caves early in the twentieth century
follows.
Anonymous Song Lyric to "Boddhisatrva Barharian"

(9th-10th century)
On our pillows we made a thousand vows:
if you want to end things,
you'll have to wait-
till the green hills fall;
247
till steel weights float on the water,

you'll ha ve to wait
till the Yellow River
dries to its bed;
rill the stars Shen and Chen

in broad daylight appear,
till the Northern Dipper moves round to the south.
If you want to end things, it won't be all right
till the sun shines brightly
at midnight.
248
The Beginnings of Classical
Poetry (Shi)
Sad songs can take the place of tears, far gazing can take the place
of return. -"Sad Song" (EasternHan yue-fu)
Although traditional critics have always traced the Chinese poetic tradi-
tion back to the Classic of Poetry and the "Lyrics of Chu," the real be-
ginning of the classical tradition, unbroken for two millennia, is best un-
derstood as beginning in the Eastern Han, when a new personal lyric
poetry grew up alongside the yue-fu. This new "classical poetry" (shi)
was written in lines of five syllables, the most popular meter for yue-fu,
and was very different in tone from the stiff, archaic poetry in four-
syllable lines that was still written in the Han, in imitation of the Classic
of Poetry.
The earliest classical poems are anonymous, the so-called Old Poems (gu-shi).
The most famous of these anonymous lyrics, probably dating from the second cen-
tury A.D., are the IINineteen Old Poems." Another group of anonymous parting
poems was circulated as the works of Li Ling and SuWu, two famous figures of the
Western Han (though the poems actually date from the second and third century
A.D.). In addition to these two groups, there are various other early anonymous "old
poems" scattered through early sources.
Although we find a few clumsy attempts at classical poetry in the five-syllable
line earlier, it was at the end of the second century A.D. that well-known literary men
adopted the new form of classical poetry, just as they began to write yue-fu in the
same period.
Yue-fu and classical poetry came to be seen as Quite distinct in later centuries,
but during this early period they are very close and sometimes indistinguishable. The
two forms shared a set of common themes and situations which, taken together, em-
bodied the basic concerns of the period, as the Han Dynasty collapsed and warring
armies tore the country apart. In yue-fu, the speaker often assumed the voice of an-
other person in an imagined situation; classical poetry, by contrast, developed into
a first-person lyric, with the poet speaking for himself or herself in the historical pre-
sent.Although this distinction is by no means consistent In the early period, it guided
the evolution of the two forms in separate directions. Yue-fu may have been per-
formed by professional singers, probably illiterate; early classical poetry, even in the
anonymous "Old Poems/ shows at least a rudimentary education; and while both
forms were no doubt enjoyed by the educated elite, classical poetry came from them.
In the following selection we first treat yue-fu, the anonymous "Old Poems," and
early classical poetry by known writers together, showing how they share and make
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• .....;;. ---2
different use of a body of common themes. Then we look at some of the known poets
writing in the third century.
The thematic headings are arranged to tell a simple hypothetical story: parting,
longing on the road (either on the part of the traveler or the person who remained
behind), coming to the city, being alone at night, the message or gift sent to the
beloved, the stranger encountering a woman, feasting, impermanence and disillu-
sion, and finally the return. Beneath the story that these themes tell, we can see the
overriding concerns of the poets of the period: separation, relationships torn apart
and new relationships formed. This is very much a poetry of dislocation, a poetry
about outsiders who have left their communities and gone to the city, into service,
or into the army.
As we look at some of the phases of this "story:' we should also keep in mind
the literary historical changes that were occurring. For example, in the first section,
on "Parting and Going Off," we see a yue-fu version in which the man leaves his
family to perform some unnamed act of violent desperation. There are "old poems"
on the parting of friends, with consolation offered. On a more sophisticated level,
there is the "application" of the conventions of parting to a specific historical expe-
rience: in A.D. 192, after rebel factions devastated the capital Chang-an, Wang Can
takes leave of friends and kin, and on the road he sees another, terrible example of
abandonment and breaking of the bonds of kinship. Finally, from the middle of the
third century, Ruan Ii invokes the motif as a general principle-perhaps as part of a
decision to quit the social world for the private life of a recluse.
Parting and Going Off

East Gate (Eastern Han? yue-fu)
He went out East Gate,
no hope to return;
he came in the gate,
he was shaken with grief.
No food in the kettle;

no clothes on the rack.
He drew his sword,
he went out the gate,
his children wept and wife pulled at his clothes.
"Other wives want wealth and honor,

I gladly share gruel with you,
share gruel with you:
By broad Heaven above,
by our babies here below,
this is wrong!"
"Get out of my way! I go!

I've waited far too long!
-_
250
......
Already my hair hangs white,

I cannot stay here forever!"
The following two parting poems are preserved in the corpus spuriously attributed
to Li Lingand Su Wu. The first is spoken in a woman's voice, saying goodbye to a
man leaving for the wars.
Anonymous Old Poem (attributed to Su Wu)

When I bound my hair and became your wife,
there were no doubts in the love we shared.
Our pleasure is just for this evening now,
joy must be had while the time is here.
A traveler thinks on the long road ahead:
you rise and check the time of night.
The stars Shen and Chen have already set,
and you go, taking leave from this moment on.
You are marching off to the battlefield,
we do not know when we'll meet again.
Holding your hand, I give a great sigh,
wet with tears for this parting in life.
Try hard to take care of your years of youth,
and forget not the times of our pleasure.
If you live, you will come back again,
if you die, I will think of you forever.
Anonymous Old Poem (attributed to Su Wu)

Flesh and blood join as branch to leaf;
companions as well depend on each other.
And if on this earth all men are brothers,
no man is a traveler alone on the road.
We two were trees linked limb to limb,
you and I were like one body;
we were once those ducks that mate for life,
now split like the stars Shen and Chen;
once always found at each other's side,
now far as Qin from Turkestan.
When we thought how each must go his way,
our love was renewed with each passing day.
The deer cry out, they think on wild grasses:
which may serve as a figure for honored guests,
and here I have a flask of wine
to offer you, soon to be far away.
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---------------4111
I want you to stay and pour it out,

solace for a lifetime's closeness.
"The deer cry out, they think on wild grasses" is a slightly altered quotation from
one of the most famous poems in the Classic of Poetry, "Deer Cry" (CLXI) (see p.
275). This piece continued to be performed at banquets to welcome guests. The level
of literary education in the poem is suggested less by the act of citing the Classic of
Poetry than by the stock exegetical response in the following line. This line is the
"right answer," the standard interpretation, as if "Deer Cry" had been an identifica-
tion question on an elementary quiz on the Classic of Poetry. Such naive use of the
Classic of Poetry may be contrasted with the more sophisticated reference in Wang
Can's poem below.
"Seven Sorrows" can be dated with some precision to the year 192 or soon there-
after. In 190, Dong Zhuo had sacked Luo-yang, the "Eastern Capital," abducted the
Han emperor Xian, and carried him to Chang-an, the "Western Capital." In 192, fight-
ing broke out between Dong Zhuo's subordinate generals in Chang-an. Wang Can
decided to seek refuge with Liu Biao, the governor of )ing-zhou (ling-man), who had
been a student of Wang Can's grandfather.
Wang Can (177-217), Seven Sorrows I

In Chang-an the fighting was out of control,
jackals and tigers contrived our doom.
I abandoned the heartland, I went away,
to take myself far to the land of Jing-man.
In sorrow my kinsmen stood facing me,
my friends came after me, clinging.
I went out the gates, no one was seen,
only white bones hiding the meadows.
On the road was a starving woman
who abandoned her baby in the grass.
She heard it wail, she looked around,
she wiped away tears but did not turn back.
"I know not where I myself will die,
I cannot keep us both alive."
I whipped on my horse and left her there,
such words I could not bear to hear.
To the south I climbed the slope of Ba Mound
and turned my head to gaze on Chang-an.
And I understood why someone wrote "Falling Stream"-
I gasped and felt that pain within.
Ba Mound was the tomb of the Western Han emperor Wen, who presided over an
age of prosperity and good government that stood in sharp contrast to the war-torn
Chang-an of A.D. 192. "Falling Stream" was the title of a poem in the Classic of Po-
etry (153) recalling another capital. It begins:
252
Biting chill, that falling stream

that soaks the clumps of asphodel.
o how I lie awake and sigh,
thinking of Zhou's capital.
Poets of the end of the second century and the first decades of the third century gave
accounts of the collapse of Han civilization-its cities in ruins, human relationships
torn apart, unburied bones throughout the countryside. The reason that these large
historical upheavals were represented in Chinese literature was perhaps the expec-
tation, articulated in the "Great Preface," that the poet would be the voice of the
age.
In the following somewhat later poem by Ruan li. the parting is not from any-
one in particular, but from the entire social world and the very possibility of having
a family. Vet the next-to-Iast couplet recalls the words of the mother to her aban-
doned baby in Wang Canis "Seven Sorrows."
Ruan Ji (210-263), Songs of My Cares III

A path will form beneath fair trees,
in eastern gardens, peach and plum.
Autumn winds blow bean leaves flying,
from now begins wasting and the fall.
The glory of flowers comes to tatters,
briar and brush grow in the hall.
I forsook it all, I galloped away,
went off up the foot of Western Hill.
I cannot protect myself alone,
much less take care of wife and child.
Frost blankets the grass of the meadows,
and the year too has reached its end.
Longing on the Road

Nineteen Old Poems I
Keep on going, on and on,
parted from you while alive.
Ten thousand miles apart and more,
each of us at a corner of sky.
The road between is blocked and long,
will we ever meet face to face again?
A Turkish horse leans to the north wind,
a Yue bird nests in the southernmost bough.'
Every day we grow farther apart,
'Yue was the southeastern part of China.
253
every day my sash hangs looser.

Drifting clouds block the bright sun,
and the traveler does not look to return.
To think of you makes a person old,
and the time of year is suddenly late.
Let it go now, say no more!
just eat well and take care.
The point of the fourth couplet is that each creature longs to be where it belongs:
the horse from the North faces north, while the Yuebird chooses to nest on the south-
ernmost bough of a tree. The poem does not indicate the genders of those people
parted from, nor is it clear whether the poem is spoken from the viewpoint of the
traveler or of the person left behind. In one common alternative interpretation, the
last line is understood as the speaker rejecting longing: he or she declares, "I will
eat well and take care of myself."
The following poem is early, but more literary than the "Nineteen Old Poems."
It uses the conventional images and phrases of the "old poems," but it is also much
more specific in the situation it describes.
Qin ]ia (2nd century), To His Wife (first of three) (attributed)

Liken man's life to morning dew,
Our time in the world is much trouble and pain:
worries and hardships Come always too soon,
joyous reunions are always so late.
I brood on my present mission,

each day I go still farther from you.
I sent a carriage to take you home:
alone you went and alone will return.
When I read your letter, I was sad,

at meals, unable to eat.
Isit alone in the empty room,
with no one there to cheer me,
and through long nights unable to sleep,
Itoss and turn on the pillow.
Sorrow COmeslike tracing a ring-
the heart is no mat to be rolled away.
The poem ends with a recollection of Classic of Poetry XXVI"Boat of Cypress" (see
p.47):
... This heart of mine is no stone;

you cannot turn it where you will.
254
This heart of mine is no mat;

I cannot roll it up within ...
Coming to the City

Coming to the city is less a phase in its own right than the condition of the feast, in
which new relationships of closeness are briefly formed in face of danger and death.
These relationships are collective rather than individual, and the voice is quite dif-
ferent from the voice that spoke of well-established individual relationships in part-
ing. For a fuller treatment of this theme, see the section on "Feast" (pp. 274-294)
Nineteen Old Poems III

Cypress on grave mound, green so green,
and in the ravine, rocks heaped in piles.
Man is born between earth and sky;
he goes swift as a wayfarer traveling far.
So take your joy in beakers of ale,
pour ir full, not stingily;
Drive the cart harder, lash on the nag,
in Luo-yang and Wan good times are had.
Luo-yang is a city teeming full,
where fine hats and sashes seek out their own.
Narrow lanes line the thoroughfares
with many great houses of princes and earls.
Two palaces face each other afar,
paired towers, a hundred feet high and more.
So feast to the end, give the heart glee,
why let grim woes beset you?
Nineteen Old Poems IV

A good feast brings us together today,
of such revels and mirth it is hard to tell all.
The harp is struck, the notes rise free,
new tunes so fine they touch the gods.
Those with virtue sing high words,
those skilled in song will hear what's true.
All of one heart, we share the same wish,
but the thought is withheld, not fully shown.
Man is born into only one time,
a sudden thing, dust whirled in the wind.
So why not whip your fine steed on,
seize a stronghold before some other?
Don't stay a common man and poor,
ever in hardship, always beaten down.
255
Alone at Night
Nineteen Old Poems XIX
Moonlight glowing so bright
shines on my bed curtains of lace.
From worry and sadness I cannot sleep,
I pull on my clothes, rise and pace.
Though travels are said to have their joys,
better by far to turn home Soon.
I go out the door and walk alone,
to whom can I tell these dark thoughts?
I crane my neck, go back in the room,
and tears that fall are soaking my gown.
We may recall that Wang Can was the poet who, in the firstof his "Seven Sorrows,"
was fleeing Chang-an in 192. The following poem was written after he escaped south
to refuge inling-man; but even there he was unhappy, unable to sleep, "alone at night."
Wang Can, Seven Sorrows II

ling-man is not my home,
so why do I linger here so long?
In a douhle boat I went upriver
until sunset saddened my heart.
The last light hung on the ridges of hills,
in the folds of cliffs the shadows increased.
Faxes went scurrying to their lairs,
birds flew circling native groves.
Rolling waves stirred clear echoes,
and monkeys howled from high on shore.
A sudden breeze ruffled my skirt and sleeves,
and silver dew soaked the folds of my gown.
Alone that night I could not sleep,
then lifting my robe, I stroked the harp.
Its silk and beechwood stir passions
and make me bring forth sad melody.
This wayfaring will never end,
the sting of care is hard to endure.
Ruan ji, Songs of My Cares I

In the night I could not sleep,
restless I rose and plucked the harp.
Thin curtains mirrored the bright moon,
cool breeze blew into gown-folds.
A lone swan screeched out on the moors,
256
in the north woods birds flew singing.

I wavered then, what would I see?-
troubled thoughts injure a heart all alone.
The motif of longing at night appears also in the following piece from the "Nineteen
Old Poems" on the Oxherd and Weaver stars, doomed by the gods to be lodged
apart in the heavens because of their love affair.They are allowed to meet only once
a year, on the seventh eve of the seventh month, when they cross the River of
Stars-the Milky Way-on a bridge formed by magpies.
Nineteen Old Poems X

Faraway lies that star, the Oxherd;
she sparkles, the Maid in the River of Stars.
She stretches her pale and delicate hand,
'ows," clacking, she whiles away time with the shuttle.
south A day is spent and her weaving not done,
light." as her tears fall down like the rain.
The River of Stars is shallow and clear,
nor are they so very far apart.
But across that bright and brimming stream,
she gazes with longing and cannot speak.
The story of the Oxherd and the Weaver and their meeting on the Seventh Eve,cross-
ing a bridge of magpies, was a favorite theme of poets over the ages. It was usually
treated in terms of frustrated longing (as in the tenth of the "Nineteen Old Poems")
or the brevity of the lovers' meeting. The eleventh-century Song lyricist Qin Guan,
however, later writing lyrics to the melody "Gods on the Magpie Bridge," gave the
theme a memorable twist.
Qin Guan, (1049-1100), to "Gods on the Magpie Bridge"

Fine wisps of cloud sport their craft,
shooting stars bear word of the lovers' pain,
and now far off in the River of Stars
they are making the crossing unseen.
To meet just once in fall's metal wind
and in the jade white dew
turns out to be better by far
than the countless meetings of mortals.
Their tender feelings seem like water,
this sweet moment is as in dream-
how can they bear to turn their heads
to the path leading back over Magpie Bridge?
But so long as both of them love
and so long as their love lasts on,
257
it does not need to be done

every night and every morning at dawn.
The Message and Gift
Watering My Horse by the Great Wall (Eastern Han? yue-fu)

Green, green the grass by the river,
thoughts on far travels go on and on;
I can't bear to think on his travels,
I saw him last night in my dreams,
in dream I saw him right by my side,
when I woke he Was off in another land,
in another land and a different place,
I tossed and turned and saw him no more.
The mulberry, bare, knows Heaven's wind,
the ocean's waters know Heaven's cold.
Whoever comes shows love for his own,
and no one wants to comfon me.
A stranger came from a far-off land,
and gave me a paired-carp letter case;
I called for the boy to cook the carp
and in it I found the letter.
I read the letter on my knees,
and what did the letter sayl_
It began, "Take care of yourself,"
and ended, "I love you forever."
Nineteen Old Poems IX

There is a rare tree in my yard,
green are its leaves, rich in flowers.
I pulled its boughs to pluck a bloom
to send to the one I love.
Sweet scent filled my gown and sleeves,
the way is too far to send it.
What value has the thing itself?-
it only recalls how long since he left.
The Stranger and the Woman
This phase of our hypothetical narrative may be seen as related to "Mulberries by the
Path" (p. 234) and "Officerof the Guard" (p. 235), both translated in the yue-fu section.
The difference is that in these versions the perspective is, at least in part, the man's.
The yue-tu "Prelude" is a typically fragmentary narrative of a woman showing kind-
ness to the stranger and her husband coming in and viewing them with suspicion.
258
Prelude (Eastern Han? yue-fu)

Swallows go winging before the hall,
gone with the winter, in summer back.
Once there were brothers, two or three,
who were drifters in faraway lands.
"There was no one to patch my worn-out clothes,
there was no one to sew me new ones,
but then I found this good lady,
who took them and sewed them for me."
And her husband comes in through the gate,
he looks at them sideways and glares northwest.
"My husband, do not glare so:
when the water's clear, stones can be seen."
"Stones jut up all along the stream;
it is best to go home and not travel afar."
Nineteen Old Poems II

Green, green is the grass by the river,
in garden the willows are all dense and full.
High in the tower a woman so lovely,
she glows in the window, white and so pure.
Rouge on her cheeks, bright in her beauty,
and she puts out a pale and delicate hand.
Once long ago I sang in the bar room,
now I'm the wife of a traveling man.
He travels for pleasure and never comes home now,
A lonely bed can't be kept empty for long.
Nineteen Old Poems V

To the northwest stands a tower high
whose top is level with drifting clouds,
its windows are meshed with latticework,
with eaves all around, three flights of stairs.
From above came song and the sound of a harp
whose echoes were sad as they could be.
And who could sing a song like that?-
it must be someone like Qi Liang's bride.'
The minor tones came out clear with the wind,
"After her husband was killed in battle, Qi liang's wife wept for ten days, then committed suicide.
The association here is primarily musical: "Qi liang's Wife's lament," fancifully attributed to her,
was a standard piece in the harp repertoire.
259
and then they faltered, mid-melody;

once she strummed, then sighed again,
impassioned and filled with melancholy.
I don't care that the singer feels pain,
what hurts is that few understand the sound.
I wish we could be two golden swans
to fly with great wingbeats high and away.
Impermanence and Disillusion

The speaker rides out the city gates, looks at the tombs outside the city, and reflects
on the brevity of life. He may decide that the best thing to do is enjoy himself in the
present, or he may be left in despair.
Nineteen Old Poems XIII

I drove my wagon out Upper East Gate
and gazed at far tombs north of the walls.
Winds whistled in silver poplars,
cypress and pine lined the wide lanes.
Beneath them lay men long dead,
fading far off into endless night.
They sleep under Yellow Springs sunken from sight,
and never will wake in a thousand years.
Shadow and Light move in endless floods,
our destined years are like morning's dew.
Man's life is as brief as a sojourner,
old age lacks the firmness of metal or stone.
They have brought men here for thousands of years,
a span unmatched by good man or Sage.
With pills and diets men seek the Undying,
and are usually duped by elixirs.
The better way is to drink fine ale
and dress yourself in satin and silk.
Nineteen Old Poems XIV

Each day those gone are farther withdrawn,
each day newcomers grow more like kin.
I went out the gate, stared straight ahead,
and all I saw were barrows and tombs.
The ancient graves have been plowed to fields,
their cypress and pines smashed to kindling.
Mournful winds fill silver poplars,
260
_______________ .-4
in their moaning a woe that destroys a man.

I long to turn back to my native town,
Iwish to return, but there is no way.
Nineteen Old Poems XV

Life's years do not reach a hundred,
but we always have cares for a thousand.
The daylight so short, the night so long-
why not go roaming, candle in hand?
Joy must be seized at its moment-
why should you wait for times to come?
The fool who cannot bear to spend
wins only mocking in later days.
Qiao the Prince, a man Undying-
it is hard to match his term of years.
The Return
Anonymous Old Poem
At fifteen Iwent with the armies,
now at eighty at last I come home.
On the road I met one from my village,
"Who remains of my family now?"
"You can see your house far over there,
in the cypress and pines and rolling tombs."
Hares come in through the dog-holes,
and pheasants fly up from the beams.
Wild grains grow in the courtyard,
greens take root by the well.
I boiled the grain for my gruel,
and picked the greens for a soup.
When soup and gruel were both ready,
there was no one to give them to.
Then Iwent out the gate and gazed east,
and the tears fell, soaking my robes.
One of the most durable openings of yue-fu and the "old poems" was going out the
gates of Luo-yang, the Eastern Han capital, as in "Nineteen Old Poems" XIII.From
the eastern gates could be seen the great cemetery in the Bei-mang Hills. In what
seems to be a poem on returning to the city, an ironic reversal occurs: Cao Zhi (or
Mr. Ying,as referred to in the title) climbs Bei-mang and looks back on Luo-yang it-
self, in ruins, sacked by Dong Zhuo in 190 and now virtually deserted.
261
Cao Zhi (192-232), Sending Off Mr. Ying (first of two)

On foot I climbed up Bei-mang's slopes
and gazed afar on Luo-yang's hills.
Luo-yang, so silent and forlorn,
its halls and palaces all burned away.
Each wall has collapsed and crumbled,
briars and brambles stretch to sky.
I saw no old folks from times before,
in my eyes were only new young men.
I walked at an angle, there was no path,
fields had run wild, tilled no more.
Long had the traveler not returned,
he can no longer tell the boundary paths.
And the moors, so barren and bleak,
no hearthfires seen for a thousand miles.
When I think on this place I used to live,
breath chokes within, I cannot speak.
Coda: Reencounter
Old Poem
I climbed the hill to pick deerweed,
going down I met my husband of old.
I knelt down and asked my husband,
"And how do you find your new bride?"
"Though good do I find my new bride,
she's not so fine as my wife of old.
In fairness of feature both are alike,
but in skill of hands you are not the same.
When the new bride entered the gate in front,
the old wife left by the door at the side.
The new bride weaves the golden silk,
the old wife wove the plain.
Of golden silk, four yards a day,
to more than five yards of the plain.
Then put the plain silk by the gold,
the new bride cannot match the old."
The Poets
Although we do have poems and songs by literary men from earlier in the Eastern
Han, the period when we begin to find yue-fu and "old poems" written extensively
by known authors was during the [ian-an (196--219), the last, and purely nominal
262
Han reign period, when both the emperor and North China were in the hands of the
warlord Cao Cao (155-220), the "Lord Protector."
Cao Cao gathered to himself many of the itinerant intellectuals and writers of
the day. The most famous of these intellectuals constituted the so-called Seven Mas-
ters of the [ian-an, Cao Cao himself left a small but remarkable collection of yue-fu.
Cao Cao's son and heir, Cao Pi (187-226), who declared the establishment of the
Wei Dynasty, left a somewhat larger collection of both poetry and yue-fu. The most
distinguished poet and writer of the period, however, was one of Cao Cao's younger
sons, Cao Zhi (192-232).
The poets of this period tended to take the forms of treatment of the yue-fu and
"old poems" and apply them more specifically to their present circumstances. Thus,
in the following yue-fu, Cao Cao applies the poem on the hardships of travel to a
military campaign in which he was engaged.
Cao Cao (155-220), The Bitter Cold

Northward we climbed the Tai-hang Range,
the way was hard-going and steep,
the slopes wound round like sheepguts
and on them our wagon wheels broke.
Trees were bare and bleak,
where the voice of the north wind moaned.
Bears crouched right before us,
tigers roared on both sides of the road.
Few folk dwell in these valleys,
where the snow comes down so thick.
I craned my neck and heaved a sigh,
many the cares on far campaigns.
My heart was then so full of woe
I wished at once to turn back east.
But the rivers were deep, the bridges broken,
mid-journey I faltered, unsure.
In confusion I lost my former path,
and at sundown had no place to rest.
On and on, going farther each day,
men and horses both starving.
With sacks on our backs we gather kindling,
and chop at ice to make our gruel.
Sad is that poem "Eastern Mountains":
it makes my heart always grieve.
When Cao Cao shows his learning, there is often political propaganda involved.
"Eastern Mountains" was a poem in the Classic of Poetry, attributed to the Duke of
Zhou, on a campaign in the East. The Duke of Zhou had been the uncle and "Pro-
263
rector" of the Zhou king; the potential historical analogy, wrapping himself in the
respectable mantle of the Duke of Zhou, must have been irresistible for Cao Cao,
who held the young Han emperor a virtual captive. The firststanza of "EasternMoun-
tains" (ClVI) follows:
We marched to those eastern mountains,

streaming on and never turning.
And now we come back from the east,
in the pall of driving rain.
We are returning from the east,
Our hearts are grieving for the west.
Prepare those wraps and gowns,
make us serve no more with the soldier's gag.
Now caterpillars are creeping and crawling,
teeming in mulberry fields.
I sleep alone all curled up
right here under the chariot.
We can also see such political use of the Classic of Poetry in the following poem by
Wang Can, describing his journey to Cao Cao's domain ("the borders of Qiao") as
leaving a land in ruins and coming to the "happy land" described in "Huge Rat"
(CXIII;see p. 52). Wang Can wrote this poem after leavingJing-man (see "Seven Sor-
rows" II, p. 256).
Wang Can (177-217), With the Army V

I kept faring down roads choked with weeds,
with a trudging pace, my heart in sorrow.
When I looked around, no hearth fires seen,
all that I saw were forests and mounds.
City walls grew with brush and briars,
footpaths were lost, no way to get through.
Canes and cattails to the broad bog's end,
reeds and rushes lined the long stream.
A cool breeze blew up at sundown
and swept my boat gliding swiftly along.
Wintry cicadas sang out in the trees,
and the swan ranged, brushing the sky.
The traveler's sorrows were many;
I could not stop my falling tears.
Then at dawn I crossed the borders to Qiao,
where cares melted, l.felr easy and free.
Roosters were crowing on every side,
millet swelled the level fields.
Inns and lodgings filled the hamlets,
men and women thronged the crossroads.
Unless in domains ruled by a Sage,
264
who could enjoy such blessings?

The Poet once praised a "happy land"-
though a stranger here, Istill wish to stay.
One of the most common motifs in vue-iu and old poems was to see a bird and long
to flyaway with it, or if a woman were involved, to become a bird and flyaway to
her or with her (see "Nineteen Old Poems" V).Again, one might recall the last stanza
of "Boat of Cypress" (XXVI)in the Classic of Poetry:
a Sun! and you Moon!
Why do you each grow dim in turn?
These troubles of the heart
are like unwashed clothes.
I think on it in the quiet,
Icannot spread wings to flyaway.
In the lian-an, this visionary desire to escape can be attached to so mundane a mis-
ery as too much work in the office. LikeWang Can, LiuZhen was one of the "Seven
Masters of the [ian-an."
Liu Zhen (d. 217), Unclassified Poem

The work in my office keeps piling up,
with documents scattered everywhere.
My writing brush speeds, no chance to eat,
into late afternoon Ihave no rest.
Iam lost among records and registers,
my head whirling in confusion.
I get away, go west of the walls,
climb the heights and let my gaze roam.
There, a square pool with silvery water,
and in it are ducks and wild geese.
a to have such fleet feathers
and to bob in the waves along with you.
In Cao Zhi's famous "Unclassified Poem," the passing bird is not the means of vi-
sionary escape but a potential message bearer, albeit a failed one.
Cao Zhi, Unclassified Poem I

High on the terrace are sad strong winds,
the dawn sun shines on northern woods.
The man is thousands of miles away,
past lakes and rivers, deep and far.
How can my double boat reach him?-
this separation is hard to bear.
265
A lone goose came flying on its way south

and passing my yard, gave a long sad call.
My thoughts took wing, Iyearned for him far,
and wished by this bird to send him word.
But its shape and shadow were suddenly gone,
its swift wing beats wound my heart.
Things that fly-wild geese or clouds-might serve as messengers to carry word to

those far away. In the poem below, note that Chinese bronze mirrors required COn-
stant polishing to keep giving a reflection. Xu Gan was another of the "Seven Mas-
ters of the jian-an."
Xu Gan (171-218), Chamber Thoughts III

Clouds go drifting in billowing floods,
and by them Iwished to send these words.
They tossed in the wind, wouldn't take my words,
and I faltered here helpless in longing.
All others who part will meet again;
you alone give no date for return.
Since you have gone away,
my bright mirror darkens, unpolished.
Like flowing waters I long for you-
there is never a time that they end.
The closing simile of Xu Gan's poem, with its memorable simplicity, offers a good
illustration of how the poetic tradition worked. "Since You Have Gone Away" be-
came a yue-fu title in the fifth and sixth centuries, with dozens of attempts to rewrite
the last four lines of Xu Gan's poem as a quatrain. The first line is always "Since you
have gone away"; the second line speaks of something neglected; the third and fourth
lines offer a simile of longing:
Yan Shi-bo (5th century)

the scented curtains hang unraised.
Like whirling snow I long for you,
turbulent sifting, no edge or end.
Wang Rong (467-493)

in the golden brazier no incense burns.
Like the bright candle I long for you,
at midnight burning down uselessly.
266
Chen Shu-bao (553-604)

cobwebs darken my curtains of lace.
Like the setting sun I long for you
that even a moment does not turn back.
Cao Zhi (192-232)

The turn of the third century was a remarkably violent and dangerous period in Chi-
nese history. Power was not secure. Cao Cao's son and successor, Cao Pi, Emperor
Wen of the Wei Dynasty, was naturally uneasy about collusion between the other
Cao princes, among whom was his half brother Cao Zhi, considered then and now
to be the greatest literary talent of the age. Aftersummoning the princes to his cap-
ital in 223, Cao Pi is believed to have arranged the murder of one of his brothers,
the Prince of Ren-cheng. Fearfulof plots, Cao Pi objected to his brothers' spending
time together outside the watchful eyes of the palace. As a result, when his broth-
ers Cao Zhi and Cao Biao planned to journey back to their domains together, Cao
Pi forbade them to lodge in the same place overnight. The prohibition enraged Cao
Zhi and stirred him to muster his considerable poetic talent in one of the finest sets
of poems of the period. Here Cao Zhi portrays himself in a role with great cultural
resonance, as the wronged liegeman like Qu Yuan, faring on an endless journey,
tormented by the malice of ill-wishers.
Presented to CaD Biao, Prince of Bai-ma

In July of 223, the fourth year of the Huang-chu Reign, rhe Prince of Bai-
rna, the Prince of Ren-cheng, and myself all went to court in the capital for
rhe seasonal gathering of the great nobility. After we reached Luo-yang, the
Prince of Ren-cheng departed this life. When it came to September, I was
planning to go back to my own domain in the company of the Prince of Bai-
rna; but subsequently an official in charge of such matters thought that it
would be best if we two princes, returning to our fiefs, should spend our
nights at separate locations. The thought continues to provoke resentment
in me. Since our final parting will be in a few days, I wanted to show how
I feel in these poems, to take my leave of the prince. I completed them in a
state of outrage.
I
We greeted the Emperor in Cheng-ming Lodge,
and were soon to turn back to our old frontiers.
We set forth in dawn's cool from the royal city,
and by sundown had passed Mount Shou-yang.
The Yi and the Luo were deep and broad,
we wished to ford, but there was no bridge.
Then sailing by boat we traversed huge waves,
267
resenting how long was Our road to the east.

I looked back with longing to palace towers;
stretching to see them, my heart ached within.
II
Great Valley, so barren and vast,
the trees on the hills, dense and gray.
Torrents of rain turned the road to mud,
the runoff was flooding all around.
Where the roads joined, the tracks broke off;
I changed my course and climbed a high hill.
A long slope stretched to the cloud-covered sun,
my horses Were black and smeared brown.
III
Though black and smeared brown, rhey could still go on,
but my thoughts were a knotted tangle within.
A knotted tangle from what concern?-
rhat dear kin and I must lodge apart.
At first we had planned to go side by side,
midway it changed, we could not be together.
Owls were hooting on my carriage yoke,
wolves and wild dogs stood in the road.
Blue flies mar both black and white,
those who speak ill estrange kin.
I want to turn back, but there is no path;
I pull back on the reins and stand wavering.
IV
I waver, yet why do I linger here?-
this longing I feel knows no bounds.
Autumn winds bring a faint chill,
cold-weather cicadas cry out by my side.
The moors, so bleak and gloomy,
as the Sun is abruptly hid in the west.
Returning birds head to tall trees,
their wingbears are urgent and swift.
A lone beast goes running, seeking the herd,
plants in its mouth, no chance to eat.
Being touched by these things wounds my cares,
I touch my chest and heave a long sigh.
V
I heave a long sigh, but what can I do?-
Heaven's charge runs afoul of me.
Can I help longing for my full brother,
268
The Chinese •Middle Ages"
now gone for good, body never to return?

His lonely soul hovers about his old realm,
his sarcophagus rests in the capital.
Those who survive will go suddenly too,
perish utterly, their bodies decay.
Man's life finds lodging in but one age,
and he goes as the morning dew that dries.
My years sink westward among the stars,
shadow and echo cannot be pursued.
I look on myself, neither metal nor stone,
and I gasp at the sorrow this brings to the heart.
VI
Sorrow in heart shakes my spirit,
let it go then, describe it no more!
A true man's aims include all the world,
a thousand miles is as a near neighbor.
If only this love neither fail nor flag,
though far away, fate brings us closer.
Why need we share bed curtains and quilt,
and only then state the strength of our care?
If troubled thoughts become a fever,
it is naught but the passions of boys and girls.
But such turmoil of love for my flesh and blood-
can I help harboring bitterness?
VII
What broodings come in my bitterness?-
that Heaven's charge truly wins distrust.
It is vain to go seek the Undying,
Red Pine the Undying misled me long.
The last change can come in an instant,
who can seize for himself a century's span?
Now as we part, so long ere we meet,
when again will we thus clasp hands?
Prince, take fond care of your precious self,
may we both enjoy times of frail white hair.
I cease my tears and take the long road,
grasping my brush, I say farewell here.
As earlier in Han poetry, the situation that brought forth poetry more quickly than
any other was a threatened relationship: being kept apart from one's kin and friends,
being unable to return to one's roots, or, as in the poem that follows, lacking the
power to act to help another. Worried that he has the actual power to protect his
friends, Cao Zhi invents a parable of protection and gratitude.
269
Song of a Brown Wren in Wild Fields (yue-fu)

High in the trees are sad strong winds,
the ocean's waters lift up their waves.
If you have no sharp sword in hand,
what point in making many friends?
Didn't you see the wren in the fields

that saw the hawk and flew in the net?
The fowler rejoiced in catching a wren,
but a young man saw it and felt sad.
He drew his sword and cut the net,
and the brown wren was able to flyaway.
It flew and flew till it touched the sky,
then came again down to thank the young man.
Unclassified Poem II
Tumbleweed rolling, severed from root,
tossed tumbling along with the steady wind.
"I did not expect to rise in whirling gusts,
that blew me off high into the clouds.
Going higher and higher, reaching no bound,
Heaven's roads never run out."
Of such kind too is the traveler
who risks his life on the far campaign.
His woolen tunic leaves limbs exposed,
greens and beans never fill him.
Keep going then, say no more!
brooding troubles make a man old.
Ruan Ji (210-263)
Ruan ji was an important intellectual figure of the third century and one of the "Seven
Sages of the Bamboo Grove." Like many other intellectuals of the period, he was
deeply involved in politics; and like most of them, he tried his best to avoid its dan-
gerous entanglements. His poems, all entitled "Songs of My Cares," are often read
as containing veiled protests against the Si-rna clan's usurpation of power from the
Caos, the ruling house of the Wei, followed by the eventual overthrow of the Wei
and the establishment of the Jin Dynasty.
In the first poem, the earlier Warring States Kingdom of Wei, whose capital was
Da-Iiang, seems to be a figure for the Wei Dynasty of the third century. The refer-
ence to the Fire of the Quail (a constellation) facing south refers to a prophecy in
The Zuo Tradition foretelling lin's overthrow of the state of Guo. Again the pre-Qin
domain of Jin may be used as a figure for the jin Dynasty of the Si-rna clan that sup-
planted the Wei.
270
Songs of My Cares XVI

I was walking about beside Peng Pond
when I turned my head and gazed on Da-liang.
The green waters raised rheir mighty waves,
the broad moor stretched off boundless.
In every direction beasts swiftly ran,
birds soared in flight each following others.
'Twas the season when Fire of the Quail faced south,
when sun and moon stood straight apart.
North winds were harsh, bitter and cold,
and the shadowy air shed faint frost.
I, on a journey and lacking companion,
in an instant felt pain within.
Lesser men reckon the due for their deeds,
the better man stays ever with the Way.
No regrets that he ends up wasted and gaunt,
and this is the burden of my song.
From this period we begin to find an increasing number of poems celebrating the
exemplary figures of the simple life, such as the Qin Count of Dong-ling, who after
the fall of the Qin lived happily as a well-known melon farmer.
Songs of My Cares VI
I have heard of Count Dong-ling's melons
close outside Chang-an's Green Gate.
Patch by patch, they stretch to the paths,
baby melons and mothers, all joined together.
Their many hues glow in the morning sun,
drawing fine visitors from all around.
An oil-fed fire burns itself out,
much property brings its owner harm.
One may spend a life in commoner's clothes,
put no trust in stipends and popularity.
Songs of My Cares XXXIII

One more day, then one more evening,
one more evening, one more dawn.
Complexion changed from what it was,
by itself the spirit wastes away.
I hold fire and boiling water in my breast,
all things in change are calling to me.
Thousands of problems that have no end,
271
more than deftest schemes can comprehend.

r fear
only that in an instant
my soul will be whirled away by wind.
All my life I have walked upon thin ice,
and none understand how this heart seethes.
Turning Away
The poets of the generation after Ruan Ii, the poets of the Western Jin (265-316),
continued to use the same themes as the preceding century, POlishing them and re-
casting them in ever more elegant diction until the last vestiges of the popular ori-
gins of yue-fu and classical poetry had disappeared. But already in the poetry of Ruan
)i a group of new concerns had become increasingly prominent: the desire to sever
relationships rather than to rebuild them, the rejection of the social life, and a turn-
ing away from the city to the safety of unpopulated landscapes whose beauties could
take the place of the trappings of wealth and honor. This new poetry of the private
life and the natural landscape was the beginning of interests that would come to dom-
inate literature over the next few centuries. In the folloWing Western lin poems, na-
ture explicitly replaces a rich mansion, with its fine decorations and entertainments,
which had been the site of sensual delights in "Calling Back the Soul" (p. 204).
Lu]i (261-303), Calling to the Recluse

At daybreak I felt uneasy at heart,
r dusted my clothes and paused a While;
and pausing there, wondered where to go-
to the recluse who lives in his deep ravine.
At dawn he picks cress in the Southern stream,
at twilight he rests by the foot of West Hill.
Light branches like structures stretching to clouds,
dense foliage forms his green feather screens.
The "Frenzied Chu" halts in orchid-filled groves,'
and swirling fragrance meets stately trees.
Such tinkling comes from mountain rills,
falls SCour jade stones and make them ring.
Magic waves bear away tones of larnenr,"
through layered bends toppling echoes depart.
There is nothing false in this perfect joy,
why strive to mar the simple and pure?
If honor and wealth are hard to devise,
let me unhitch my team and do what r will.
3The "Frenzied Chu" was the dance performed In "Calling Back the Soul."
'The "tones of lament" are those of a fallen state in the "Great Preface" to the Classic of Poetry.
272
Zuo Si (ca. 253-ea. 307), Calling to the Recluse I

I leaned on my staff and called to the recluse
whose weed-grown path is blocked now as ever.
No structures are built in the caves on cliffs,
yet a harp is playing among the hills.
A white cloud halts on the shadowed ridge,
red petals gleam in sunlit groves.
Stony streams Scour their agates and jades,
fine fins rise to the surface and sink.
There is no need here for harps or flutes,
hills and streams make their own clear notes.
And why depend on whistling or song,
when tree clumps hum so movingly?
Dried grains are mixed with fall's chrysanthemums,
hidden orchids inserted in folds of gowns.
As I pace here, pausing, my feet grow weary-
I would cast down the pins of my officer's cap.
273

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THE CHINESE "MIDDLE AGES": PERIOD INTRODUCTION

The great Chinese empire of late antiquity, the Han, reached

In 120 B.C., a special bureau was established in the Han government to

Heaven Above (Western Han yue-fu)

The One I Love (Western Han yue-fu)

a hair-clasp of rortoise shell,

Then I heard that his heart had changed,

When roosters crow and the dogs all bark,

South of the Walls We Fought (Western Han yue-fu)

Where the waters run deep and clear,

"On the bridge a guardhouse is built-

"We think on you, good liegemen,

East of Ping-ling (Eastern Han?)

Prelude: White Swans in Pairs (Eastern Han?)

Many of the anonymous Han yue-fu were probably composed by professional

Cocks Crow (Eastern Han?)

now that the world is at peace?

Meeting (Eastern Han?)

when he comes home one day in five,

Chang-an Has Narrow Alleys (Eastern Han?)

Other Voices in the Tradition

Shen Yue (441-513), The Sensual Charms of the Three Wives

The eldest wife wipes off boxes of jade,

Song of White Hair (Eastern Han?)

As bright as the snow on mountaintop,

We have both lived our lives in this city,

There's a woodcutter east of the city,

Mulberries by the Path (Eastern Han?)

when they go home there's always a fight,

Xin Yan-nian, Officer of the Guard (Eastern Han)

billowing sleeves, acacia vest.

Chen Lin (d. 217), I Watered My Horse at a Spring by the Wall

And the Great Wall keeps stretching on and on,

"They dressed my hair as a woman

Yue-fu of the South

The Zi-ye Songs of the Four Seasons

I ride the coach with polished sides,

Yang Pan-er (also Du-qu Song)

Yue-fu of the Northern Dynasties

Qi-yu Songs (Northern Dynasties yue-fu)

Song of the Prince of Lang-ya (Northern Dynasties yue-fu)

The Ballad of Mu-lan (Northern Dynasties yue-fu,

"Last night I saw conscription lists,

"My father has no older son,

In the east mart she bought a fine steed,

In the north matt she bought a long whip,

At dawn she took her parents' leave,

In the morning she left the river,

She went thousands of miles to battle,

She came back and saw the Emperor,

The male hare's legs have a nervous spring,

Breaking the Branches of Willows (Northern Dynasties yue-fu)

Other Voices in the Tradition:

Li Bo, SOuth of the Walls We Fought

The Xiong-nu treat slaughter as farmers treat plowing;

Beacon fires bJaze without ceasing,

Wang Shi-zhen (1526-1590), South of the Wall We Fought

The sun turned blue-black,

Go tell the Lord General,

Can't they glimpse our Lord General,