Sympathy for the Peasants
- Poetry of Yang Wanli
Rice clouds bring no rain—scant gold on the field,
Buckwheat's barren blooms frost too soon yield.
Resigned to starve through the year's last phase,
How bear an intercalary month's cruel maze?
Composed in the second year of the Longxing era under Emperor Xiaozong of Song (1164 AD). That year coincided with an intercalary eleventh month, disrupting agricultural rhythms: rice struggled to ripen due to prolonged drought without rain, while buckwheat, though flowering, yielded no grain due to early frost. Yang Wanli, then returning from Hangzhou to Jishui in Jiangxi due to his father's critical illness, witnessed the devastated farmland and impoverished lives of peasants along the way. Deeply moved, he wrote this poem. Through depicting the agricultural plight before his eyes, the work expresses profound sympathy for the farmers' suffering and helplessness towards the injustice of the times.
稻云不雨不多黄，荞麦空花早着霜。
已分忍饥度残岁，更堪岁里闰添长。
- 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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