Category: Palace Life

Some classic Chinese poems portray the grievances experienced by women in ancient Chinese history. The following three poems delve into the grievances of women in distinct ways, each offering a unique perspective.

 

春怨        Spring Sorrow

刘方平 （Author: Liu Fang Ping, 8th Century)

纱窗日落渐黄昏，gauze window sun set gradually dusk
金屋无人见泪痕。golden chamber no person see tear trace
寂寞空庭春欲晚，lonely lonely empty courtyard spring desire late
梨花满地不开门    pear blossom full of ground not open door

Translation: 

How slowly dusk descends as the sun sets beyond the muslin window
With no one in the golden chamber to see the tracks of her tears.
Oh, the loneliness of an empty courtyard when spring is almost gone
Pear blossoms cover the ground, but she won’t open the door.

 

赠内人 Send a gift to the palace’s singers and dancers

张诂    (Author: Zhang Gu, Tang Dynasty)

禁门宫树月痕过，forbidden door Palace tree moon trace pass
媚眼惟看宿鹭窠。charming eyes only see reside heron nest
斜拔玉钗灯影畔，slanting pull jade hairpin lamp shadow side
剔开红焰救飞蛾    reject open red flame rescue flying moth

Translation:

The forbidden door, the palace trees, a last trace of moon light.
But her lovely eyes see only the heron’s nest.
In the lamp’s reflection, she takes a slanting jade pin from her hair.
And puts out the red flame to save a flying moth.

 

春怨     Spring Sorrow

金昌绪 (Jin Chang Xu, Tang Dynasty)

打起黄莺儿，beaten rise yellow oriole son
莫教枝上啼。no let branch on crying
啼时惊妾梦，crying time startle my dream
不得到辽西.   not can arrive Liao west

Translation:

Throw a rock! Chase that oriole away.
Don’t let it sit on the branch making noise
Its singing startled me out of my dream
And now I’ll never get to my husband in West Liao.

 

Translation notes:

Both Liu Fang Ping and Zhang Gu’s poems delve into the grievances experienced by ladies in the Palace. In Liu’s poem, the phrase “golden chamber” derived from a famous ancient Chinese anecdote about Emperor Wu of Han, who was a brilliant and ambitious emperor but also a womanizer. His mother didn’t have high court status. Therefore, when Emperor Wu of Han was still a young prince, she arranged a marriage between her son and his cousin. The prince said that he would build her a golden chamber. The story had a miserable ending —eventually, the emperor got tired of his wife and divorced her, partially due to her inability to bear him a legitimate heir. By employing the term “golden chamber” in the poem, Liu implies that the court lady depicted was likely once a favorite of the emperor but eventually fell out of favor.

In Zhang’s poem, the discussion of a court lady’s sorrow is more implicit. By depicting the lady seeing only a heron’s nest and her subsequent action of rescuing a flying moth, Zhang effectively conveys the profound loneliness and yearning for home the woman experiences.

Jin’s poem centers around the grievances of a woman whose husband is engaged in a distant frontier battle, thousands of miles away. In the final sentence, we took a small liberty by adding the phrase “her husband” in reference to the woman’s desire to reunite with her husband in West Liao in her dream, although this phrase does not appear in the original poem. We believe that adding this phrase to our translation provides greater clarity for American readers.

虞美人   Beautiful Lady Yu

李煜       (Author: Li Yu, 10th century)

春花秋月何时了,           spring flow autumn moon when time end
往事知多少？                past affairs know many a few
小楼昨夜又东风，        small tower yesterday night again east wind
故国不堪回首月明中！past kingdom no bear return head moon bright in

雕阑玉砌应犹在，       carved railing jade stairs should still exist
只是朱颜改。               only is red face change
问君能有几多愁？       ask you can have several many sorrow
恰似一江春水向东流。just similar one river spring water towards east flow

 

Translation:

Spring flowers, autumn moon — when will they end?
All those undertakings of the past — who knows how many there were?
Last night the east wind came to my small building again.
In the bright moonlight, I couldn’t bear to look back toward my homeland.

The inlaid ramparts and jade stairs should still be there.
It’s only the beautiful faces that have changed.
I ask you, how much sorrow is possible?
Just as much as a river full of spring water flowing east.

 

Translation Notes:

The author was the last ruler of the Southern Tang state. After his empire was invaded by the Northern Song armies, he was captured and spent the last couple of years of his life essentially as a prisoner in the North. This poem is said to be the last poem that he wrote, lamenting his miserable life as a prisoner and demonstrating how much he missed his empire/hometown. The historical record indicates that after he wrote this poem and asked some singing girls to chant it, the emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty grew furious and ordered that Li Yu be poisoned to death.

The wind in traditional Chinese thought is seen as a powerful force for change, often heralding the coming of spring. Even the word ‘wind’ has within it the symbol for insect, as it was believed that the wind brought the insects that appear in great number during the spring. In The Song of Weiyang Palace, translated on this site, the blowing wind causes the peach blossoms to open.  In other poems, however, such as Lu You’s Pheonix Hairpin, the wind is bitter and brings tragic change. In Beautiful Lady Yu, the east wind comes to the poet’s small building to remind the poet of his lost and beautiful homeland, triggering unbearable pain.

 

作者：王昌龄  （Author: Wang Changling, 8th century)

 

昨 夜 風 開 露 井 桃    last night wind open dew well peach
未 央 前 殿 月 輪 高    not  central  front palace moon wheel high
平 陽 歌 舞 新 承 寵    Ping Yang (title) sing dance new receive favor
簾 外 春 寒 賜 錦 袍    curtain outside spring cold give brocade robe

 

Translation:

Last night the wind blew, and the peach trees —
The ones beside the open well — began to blossom.
That’s when the moon rose like a great wheel
High above the Weiyang palace.

Oh, how she danced and sang,
Behind the beaded curtain.
She won new favor from the emperor
A brocade robe for the cold spring air.

Translation Notes:

This was a difficult poem to translate, despite the fact that it’s composed of very concrete images and actions. We had to expand the four lines to eight in order to explain what was happening, and we still omitted a few things. The poem tells us in which of the buildings in the palace complex the actions take place (the front one), but this seemed like a meaningless and clumsy detail in English.  In the original, the wind causes the flowers to open. This 8th century concept of how the seasons change makes little sense to a 21st century reader, and trying to explain it within the context of this poem seemed unnecessarily awkward. We merely implied that the wind could have caused the flowers to blossom with the sequence of events. In doing so, however, we may have also omitted the sense of the wind as a mighty presence that creates a feminine response of flowering in a way that foreshadows the emperor in the second half of the poem. Whether it is taken as a delicate foreshadowing of the sexuality of the next stanza or not, it is important that the masculine, yang wind is juxtaposed with the feminine, yin flowers to create a sense of a full and balanced world.

In the second verse, the dancer is referred to as “she” which we considered more intimate than “the dancer.”  Some translators have assumed that the dancer was the princess herself, but this assumption is incorrect. The dancer referred to in this poem is Wei Zifu, who was working as a palace singer and dancer on Princess Pingyang’s estate. Princess Pingyang was a Western Han Dynasty princess and one of the Emperor Wu of Han’s sisters. We were able to figure out the era of the story through the palace name in the second line — Weiyang Palace which was the main imperial residence of the Han dynasty.  In 139 BC, Emperor Wu of Han paid a visit to his sister Princess Pingyang’s estate.  The princess called in Wei Zifu to dance for the emperor as an entertainment.  As a beautiful young girl talented in singing and dancing, Wei Zifu managed to catch the eye of the emperor.  After that visit, the emperor took Wei Zifu back to his palace as a concubine. Ten years later, following the emperor’s divorce with his empress Chen Jiao, Wei Zifu gave birth to the emperor’s first son and was then made empress.