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hi everyone and welcome to learn chinese[br]now brought to you by italki.com

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today we're going to look at another[br]famous classical Chinese poem "ascending

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stork Tower. this is a Tang dynasty[br]poem written by the poet Wang Zhihuan

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in the early 8th century in the regulated[br]verse style, that is the type of poetry

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that was popular in the Tang dynasty[br]where every line has the same number of

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characters, most commonly five, the poems[br]are written in couplets and the length

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is set to 4 8 or unlimited lines if it[br]goes beyond 8. there were also some

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poems of six but less common. the[br]arrangement of the characters with

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certain tones is also regulated to a[br]specific pattern although a lot of this

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has been lost when the poems are read in[br]modern Mandarin Chinese, since the tones

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have changed since the Tang dynasty.[br]Cantonese pronunciation is closer to the

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original but not exactly the same. so[br]first let's read the poem: Deng guan que

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lou[br]Bai ri yi shan jin[br]Huang he ru hai liu[br]Yu qiong qian li mu

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Geng shang yi ceng lou[br]So let's take a look at the[br]first line: Bai ri yi shan jin. So the first

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line reads: "bai ri" the white Sun, "yi" to[br]rest on, "shan" mountain, "jin" to reach the

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end of or to be used up. So this[br]can be thought of as the white Sun reaches

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its end resting on the mountains. the[br]sunsets resting on the mountains. the

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character jin is used a lot in classical[br]Chinese and takes some getting used to.

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in this context since it is related to[br]the Sun it means the Sun sets. "Huang he

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ru hai liu": "huang he" means the[br]Yellow River - one of the two major rivers

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in China together with the Yangtze River.[br]the Yellow River got its name because of

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the yellow sediment that gives it its[br]color

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"Ru" means to enter, "hai" is the sea and[br]"liu" means to flow, so we can translate

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this as the yellow river flows into the[br]sea. so the first two lines are kind of

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describing what the author can see. the[br]last two lines are more connected together:

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in order to achieve this, I will do that.[br]Yu qiong qian li mu. "Yu" means to

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desire, "qiong" is another character that[br]is similar to "jin", in this context it

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means to go to the limits of.

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"Qian li" is 1000 li - a chinese unit of[br]measurement, equal to about half a

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kilometer in modern terms

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although its length has changed[br]throughout history and in the Tang

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dynasty is equal to maybe a bit over 300[br]meters. "Mu" means eye or eyes, so the whole

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line reads to go to the limit of 1000[br]li eyes. this line doesn't translate so

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well into English but you can think of[br]it as the poet desires to see as far as

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he can. so, "geng shang

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yi ceng lou", "geng" means further, pretty much[br]the same meaning as in modern Chinese

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"shang"- to ascend, to go up

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"yi" is one, "ceng" means level or storey, "lou" is[br]pagoda. so i ascend one more level of the

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Pagoda and that pagoda is stork tower,[br]that is in the title: ascending stork

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tower. Stork tower is a pagoda built in[br]Shanxi province in the northern and

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southern dynasties period by a northern Zhou[br]dynasty general called Yu Wenhu. it

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served as a lookout post for the[br]military and because of storks nesting

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in the structure it end up being called[br]Stork tower, the tower overlooked to the

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Yellow river and was three stories high

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The original tower was destroyed by a[br]fire during a battle in the Yuan dynasty

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and because the Yellow River changed its[br]course in the Ming Dynasty the original

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position of the tower is hard to[br]determine. but in shaanxi province they

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have now built a new stork tower as a[br]tourist attraction

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the building was opened in 2002[br]I hope you guys enjoyed that classical

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Chinese poem. would you like more of these?[br]let us know in the comments below. this

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you remember after that, right? to[br]put this in a little sentence to say

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you're hungry you can say