Wei Qingzhi: Poet's Jade Splinters translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping

American Poetry Review, The, Nov 1995 by Wei Qingzhi

4. These famous lines by Tao Yuanming are cherished for the way they suggest the joining of the poet with nature through the lack of active looking in his encounter with the mountain; the poet encounters the mountain naturally as he looks up, like running into a friend. Bai Juyi, on the other hand, is actively watching his mountain, suggesting a distance from nature.

5. This is a famous story, so famous that even today when Chinese writers have to decide between alternate words they say "'push' or 'knock'?"

6. The Korean diplomat was ashamed to be bested poetically by what he thought was a common oarsman.

7. The Chinese Don Juan is Han Shou. For clarity's sake we have substituted his Western equivalent here.

8. An ancient courtship game.

9. She feels favored probably because she has slept with an important man.

10. The Sui Dynasty was known for its debauchery, and it is common to attribute its demise to its moral degeneracy, much like the Roman Empire in the West. The ruins of the Sui palace commonly appear in Chinese poetry about morality, sexuality, or the passage of time.

11. Mandarin ducks, which mate for life, are a stock image for mating, sex, and loyalty.

12. Bai Juyi's poems are often in a deliberately plain style, and some of his poetry is written in imitation of the folk songs collected by the Music Bureau ( Yuefu poems) in the 2nd century B.C. According to a popular account, Bai Juyi used to read his poems to an old peasant woman and change any line that she couldn't understand.

13. The fisherman here is being held as a kind of "natural man," equivalent to the woodcutter Thoreau encounters at Walden Pond. He is so attuned with nature that even surrounded by commerce and city life he hears only water and wind. Ouyang Xiu is making fun of these lines by ignoring the larger context of the poem in the Chinese tradition, misreading it on purpose.