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Hey everyone, today we're going to be [br]talking about Chinese Tang dynasty poetry

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and I'm going to teach you probably the most classic poem of all of Chinese history

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basically this is the first poem that students learn [br]when they begin to study classical Chinese,

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that doesn't mean it's the best ever

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but it is one of the most classic [br]textbook examples of Chinese poetry.

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Written in the Tang dynasty by poet Li Bai,

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this poem is called: Jing ye si.

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now "jing" means tranquil, "ye" means[br]night and "si" means think.

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so we can translate this title as thinking on a[br]quiet night

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now let's take a look at the first line[br]

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"Chuang qian ming yue guang",

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chuang means bed and qian in[br]this context means in front of,

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and the Chinese put the character describing position

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after the character for the thing [br]they're describing the position in relation to,

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so chuang qian literally bed[br]in front means in front of the bed

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next we have three characters "ming[br]yue guang",

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so ming means bright, yue means the moon, [br]and guang means light

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so these three together mean bright[br]moonlight

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thus the whole line means in front of the bed there is bright moonlight

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now for the second line "yi shi di shang[br]shuang",

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yi means to suspect and is the same yi as in the modern Chinese word huaiyi

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to suspect that we're not talking about suspecting a bad thing here

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you could also translate it as "seems[br]like" which in modern Chinese is hao xiang

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then we have shi which is basically[br]the same meaning as in modern Chinese,

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it means "is", then we have three characters[br]di shang shuang

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di means the ground, and shang means on

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and if you remember from the first line[br]the Chinese put position words

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after the thing they're describing the position in[br]relation to,

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so "di shang" literally meaning ground on, comes to mean on the ground.

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then the last character shuang means frost

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so these three characters together mean[br]frost on the ground

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and the whole line comes to mean: it seems like there is frost on the ground

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so these two lines together refer to the[br]scene that Li Bai was describing

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that the moon was shining so brightly outside the[br]window in front of his bed

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that the ground outside the window was lit up and[br]look white as if they had been a frost

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now for the next life

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"ju tou wang ming yue", so ju means to[br]raise and tou means head,

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so together this means to raise the head.

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it's worth noting however in modern Chinese you don't say ju tou to raise the head you say "tai tou"

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now let's look at the next three[br]characters "wang ming yue".

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wang means to gaze into the distance

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it can be seen in the[br]modern Chinese word xi wang which means hope

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in this context we can translate the[br]single character as "to gaze at".

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now the next two characters "ming yue" mean bright moon,

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so the whole line "ju tou wang ming yue" means I raised my head and gaze at the bright moon.

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now on to the next and final line [br]"di tou si gu xiang".

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So di means low, but in this context it is[br]used as a verb meaning to lower.

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then we have the character tou again meaning[br]head,

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so together it means to lower the head.

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then we have the character si- to think and the two characters gu xiang,

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which together means hometown

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so the whole line can be translated I lower my head and think of my hometown.[br]

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now let's try reading this poem together in Chinese

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you can repeat each line after me[br]

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chuang qian ming yue guang,[br]yi shi di shang shuang

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ju tou wang ming yue

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di tou si gu xiang.

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well thanks for watching guys and we'll[br]be bringing you more Chinese poems in

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the weeks to come

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zai jian!

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Li Bai is one of my favorite Tang dynasty poets

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and his style is categorized as "lan man chu yi"[br]romanticism,

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in contrast to Dufu's xian shi chu yi - realism[br]

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and you know the Tang poet[br]often wrote about the moon

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and gazing at the moon and in the Tang dynasty all the poets were like scholar officials

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who are you know they[br]got sent off on a mission

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to go and get to some province far away and they[br]have to leave the families behind,

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I dont know why not take the families with you whatever,

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and they are you know they had to go and travel all these places around the Empire

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and then they would look up at the moon and it was symbolic

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because you know their family and their hometown could look at the same moon, [br]

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there is some common bond they share like and[br]they can both see the moon,

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and its very romantic isn't it?[br]

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So Li Bai described his moon as his massive big bright shining moon - ming yue[br][br]

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and Li Bai often was drunk as well[br]he had quite a relationship with alcohol[br]