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today we're going to look at another famous classical Chinese poem "ascending
stork Tower. this is a Tang dynasty poem written by the poet Wang Zhihuan
in the early 8th century in the regulated verse style, that is the type of poetry
that was popular in the Tang dynasty where every line has the same number of
characters, most commonly five, the poems are written in couplets and the length
is set to 4 8 or unlimited lines if it goes beyond 8. there were also some
poems of six but less common. the arrangement of the characters with
certain tones is also regulated to a specific pattern although a lot of this
has been lost when the poems are read in modern Mandarin Chinese, since the tones
have changed since the Tang dynasty. Cantonese pronunciation is closer to the
original but not exactly the same. so first let's read the poem: Deng guan que
lou Bai ri yi shan jin Huang he ru hai liu Yu qiong qian li mu
Geng shang yi ceng lou So let's take a look at the first line: Bai ri yi shan jin. So the first
line reads: "bai ri" the white Sun, "yi" to rest on, "shan" mountain, "jin" to reach the
end of or to be used up. So this can be thought of as the white Sun reaches
its end resting on the mountains. the sunsets resting on the mountains. the
character jin is used a lot in classical Chinese and takes some getting used to.
in this context since it is related to the Sun it means the Sun sets. "Huang he
ru hai liu": "huang he" means the Yellow River - one of the two major rivers
in China together with the Yangtze River. the Yellow River got its name because of
the yellow sediment that gives it its color
"Ru" means to enter, "hai" is the sea and "liu" means to flow, so we can translate
this as the yellow river flows into the sea. so the first two lines are kind of
describing what the author can see. the last two lines are more connected together:
in order to achieve this, I will do that. Yu qiong qian li mu. "Yu" means to
desire, "qiong" is another character that is similar to "jin", in this context it
means to go to the limits of.
"Qian li" is 1000 li - a chinese unit of measurement, equal to about half a
kilometer in modern terms
although its length has changed throughout history and in the Tang
dynasty is equal to maybe a bit over 300 meters. "Mu" means eye or eyes, so the whole
line reads to go to the limit of 1000 li eyes. this line doesn't translate so
well into English but you can think of it as the poet desires to see as far as
he can. so, "geng shang
yi ceng lou", "geng" means further, pretty much the same meaning as in modern Chinese
"shang"- to ascend, to go up
"yi" is one, "ceng" means level or storey, "lou" is pagoda. so i ascend one more level of the
Pagoda and that pagoda is stork tower, that is in the title: ascending stork
tower. Stork tower is a pagoda built in Shanxi province in the northern and
southern dynasties period by a northern Zhou dynasty general called Yu Wenhu. it
served as a lookout post for the military and because of storks nesting
in the structure it end up being called Stork tower, the tower overlooked to the
Yellow river and was three stories high
The original tower was destroyed by a fire during a battle in the Yuan dynasty
and because the Yellow River changed its course in the Ming Dynasty the original
position of the tower is hard to determine. but in shaanxi province they
have now built a new stork tower as a tourist attraction
the building was opened in 2002 I hope you guys enjoyed that classical
Chinese poem. would you like more of these? let us know in the comments below. this
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you remember after that, right? to put this in a little sentence to say
you're hungry you can say