Chinese Poetry

Fu Hsüan: Woman (3rd C. CE)

Chinese civilization has often been considered one of the least favorable toward women, yet their problems are largely common from culture to culture. At least a number of Chinese women were able to articulate their plight in poems that came to be considered classics. Here the theme of distance is used throughout the poem to emphasize the emotional isolation that is women's lot.

How sad it is to be a woman!
Nothing on earth is held so cheap.
Boys stand leaning at the door
Like Gods fallen out of Heaven.
Their hearts brave the Four Oceans,
The wind and dust of a thousand miles.
No one is glad when a girl is born:
By her the family sets no store.
Then she grows up, she hides in her room
Afraid to look a man in the face.
No one cries when she leaves her home--
Sudden as clouds when the rain stops.
She bows her head and composes her face,
Her teeth are pressed on her red lips:
She bows and kneels countless times.
She must humble herself even to the servants.
His love is distant as the stars in Heaven,
Yet the sunflower bends toward the sun.
Their hearts more sundered than water and fire--
A hundred evils are heaped upon her.
Her face will follow the years' changes:
Her lord will find new pleasures.
They that were once like substance and shadow
Are now as far as Hu from Ch'in.
Yet Hu and Ch'in shall sooner meet
Than they whose parting is like Ts'an and Ch'en.


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Bamboo Adobe

I sit along in the dark bamboo grove,
Playing the zither and whistling long.
In this deep wood no one would know -
Only the bright moon comes to shine.





Wang Wei tr. Liu Wu-chi

Su Tung-P'o

(1037-1101)

Spring Night

Spring night - one hour worth a thousand gold coins;
clear scent of flowers, shadowy moon.
Songs and flutes upstairs - threads of sound;
in the garden, a swing, where night is deep and still.

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.



Li Bai