The Cold Food Day
- Poetry of Shen Quanqi

《寒食》
The Cold Food Day by Shen Quanqi
English Translation

All flames are put out all over the sky;

On the ground no smoke can be seen.

I wonder where a spark could come by

To light my heart, a traveler keen.

This poem was written during Shen Quanqi's period of exile. The Cold Food Festival, occurring two days before the Qingming Festival, was a traditional occasion when people extinguished fires and ate cold food to commemorate Jie Zitui. It was also a time for family reunions, tomb sweeping, and remembrance. For an exiled poet, this festival instead evoked intense loneliness and homesickness. With extremely concise strokes, Shen Quanqi contrasts the external solitude of "extinguished flames" and "hidden smoke" with the internal fervor of a "burning heart," achieving a psychological shift from stillness to movement, from external to internal, in just four lines.

中文原文( Chinese )

普天皆灭焰，匝地尽藏烟。

不知何处火，来就客心然。

· Pre： The Moon o’er the Mountain Pass
Why Chinese poems is so special?
The most distinctive features of Chinese poetry are: concision- many poems are only four lines, and few are much longer than eight; ambiguity- number, tense and parts of speech are often undetermined, creating particularly rich interpretative possibilities; and structure- most poems follow quite strict formal patterns which have beauty in themselves as well as highlighting meaningful contrasts.
How to read a Chinese poem?
Like an English poem, but more so. Everything is there for a reason, so try to find that reason. Think about all the possible connotations, and be aware of the different possibilities of number and tense. Look for contrasts: within lines, between the lines of each couplet and between successive couplets. Above all, don't worry about what the poet meant- find your meaning.

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