Qingming Series (清明系列) 3
ok, before I post the first poem, I would like to try something unthinkable. I want to attempt to give a brief description of Chinese ancient poems. I know this subject is worth 100s’ of doctoral theses. Yet, I thought it might be helpful for you as well as for me to refresh our memories, before delve into a whole series of poems.

So let’s start from the beginning, the first poem collection found in china so far is 诗经, edited around 6th century B.C., most of the poems were song lyrics about daily lives or political injustice, unlike Greek and other European ancient poems, very little was concerned with methodology or myth. Many of them were rather rigidly formatted, the majority is 4-character(四言) sentences (some 3 or longer) of various length. As the time passed and music styles changed, poems had evolved as well. It was during Tang (唐朝 618-907 A.D.) and Song dynasty (宋朝 960-1279 A.D.) that the ancient poems reached their prime. (I just skipped more than 1000 years of Chinese history, woohoo) During those two dynasties, there was an explosion in terms of numbers of poets and volumes of poems emerged. Most of the poems from Tang dynasty (唐诗) were formatted in 4 sentences of 5 characters (五言) or 7 characters (七律), with the 2nd and 4th sentences rhyme, the 1st is optional but definitely not the 3rd. as you will see later, most of the poems I am going to post fall in those two formats. Besides the above mentioned 五言, 七律, Song Dynasty saw the rise of another popular format of poems, which is called Ci (词, literally means word). These poems are constructed to fit a particular melody thus each of them has two titles, the first one indicates the type of melody the poem is supposed to be sung to and the second is the actually title. (I will post a few of those as well.) The structure of 词 is far more complicate because each melody title dictates the number of sentences as well as the number of characters in each sentence. The rhyming is also quite intricate because not only rhymes fall in ends of particular sentences, the tones of the characters in other parts of the poems also have to be carefully chosen. Of course more poems and additional formats emerged after Tang and Song dynasties (唐朝. 宋朝), it was well regarded the peak of Chinese ancient poetry.

Ok, that’s pretty much all I can manage to say at this point.

So the first poem for Qingming is the very first one jumped out at me as soon as I thought about doing this. It was written in late Tang Dynasty by this poet named
Du, Mu (杜牧 803-852 A.D.). Allow me to tell you a little about him. 杜牧 was born in a rather influential family, his grandfather was the 宰相 (modern equivalent of prime minister) during mid Tang Dynasty (唐朝). However, 杜牧 ‘s own political career was not smooth at all. As a rather honest and outspoken person, he didn’t really fit in the political circle. (sadly, the same is still true today.) Disappointed at not being recognized for his talents as well as the rampant corruption during the period, 杜牧 was known to frequent the “Green houses” (青楼) (similar places as Geisha houses) and carry out multiple romantic escapades. However, 杜牧 is regarded as one of best writers and poets for his time. His writings were often poignant, well-construed and concerned about dejected lives of the lower classes. The following poem is one of the most popular poems about Qingming (清明) of all time.

清明时节雨纷纷,
路上行人欲断魂
借问酒家何处有,
牧童遥指杏花村

incessant rain falls on the qingming day
people passed by as if have lost their souls
I ask where the tavern is
The little cowboy points to the distance where the village of apricot blossom lies

I like this poem because it gently paints a figure of sad, wet qingming day.

Hope you like it.

I’ll try to post one poem per week until the beginning of April. Next week is going to be insane in term of work load and administrative crap. So I’ll try to post something by the end of week. If not, I will make it up the week after.