Hey everyone, today we're going to be talking about Chinese Tang dynasty poetry
and I'm going to teach you probably the most classic poem of all of Chinese history
basically this is the first poem that students learn when they begin to study classical Chinese,
that doesn't mean it's the best ever
but it is one of the most classic textbook examples of Chinese poetry.
Written in the Tang dynasty by poet Li Bai,
this poem is called: Jing ye si.
now "jing" means tranquil, "ye" means night and "si" means think.
so we can translate this title as thinking on a quiet night
now let's take a look at the first line
"Chuang qian ming yue guang",
chuang means bed and qian in this context means in front of,
and the Chinese put the character describing position
after the character for the thing they're describing the position in relation to,
so chuang qian literally bed in front means in front of the bed
next we have three characters "ming yue guang",
so ming means bright, yue means the moon, and guang means light
so these three together mean bright moonlight
thus the whole line means in front of the bed there is bright moonlight
now for the second line "yi shi di shang shuang",
yi means to suspect and is the same yi as in the modern Chinese word huaiyi
to suspect that we're not talking about suspecting a bad thing here
you could also translate it as "seems like" which in modern Chinese is hao xiang
then we have shi which is basically the same meaning as in modern Chinese,
it means "is", then we have three characters di shang shuang
di means the ground, and shang means on
and if you remember from the first line the Chinese put position words
after the thing they're describing the position in relation to,
so "di shang" literally meaning ground on, comes to mean on the ground.
then the last character shuang means frost
so these three characters together mean frost on the ground
and the whole line comes to mean: it seems like there is frost on the ground
so these two lines together refer to the scene that Li Bai was describing
that the moon was shining so brightly outside the window in front of his bed
that the ground outside the window was lit up and look white as if they had been a frost
now for the next life
"ju tou wang ming yue", so ju means to raise and tou means head,
so together this means to raise the head.
it's worth noting however in modern Chinese you don't say ju tou to raise the head you say "tai tou"
now let's look at the next three characters "wang ming yue".
wang means to gaze into the distance
it can be seen in the modern Chinese word xi wang which means hope
in this context we can translate the single character as "to gaze at".
now the next two characters "ming yue" mean bright moon,
so the whole line "ju tou wang ming yue" means I raised my head and gaze at the bright moon.
now on to the next and final line "di tou si gu xiang".
So di means low, but in this context it is used as a verb meaning to lower.
then we have the character tou again meaning head,
so together it means to lower the head.
then we have the character si- to think and the two characters gu xiang,
which together means hometown
so the whole line can be translated I lower my head and think of my hometown.
now let's try reading this poem together in Chinese
you can repeat each line after me
chuang qian ming yue guang, yi shi di shang shuang
ju tou wang ming yue
di tou si gu xiang.
well thanks for watching guys and we'll be bringing you more Chinese poems in
the weeks to come
zai jian!
Li Bai is one of my favorite Tang dynasty poets
and his style is categorized as "lan man chu yi" romanticism,
in contrast to Dufu's xian shi chu yi - realism
and you know the Tang poet often wrote about the moon
and gazing at the moon and in the Tang dynasty all the poets were like scholar officials
who are you know they got sent off on a mission
to go and get to some province far away and they have to leave the families behind,
I dont know why not take the families with you whatever,
and they are you know they had to go and travel all these places around the Empire
and then they would look up at the moon and it was symbolic
because you know their family and their hometown could look at the same moon,
there is some common bond they share like and they can both see the moon,
and its very romantic isn't it?
So Li Bai described his moon as his massive big bright shining moon - ming yue
and Li Bai often was drunk as well he had quite a relationship with alcohol