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Hey everyone, today we're going to be 
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 
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 
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
night and "si" means think.

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

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now let's take a look at the first line


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"Chuang qian ming yue guang",

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chuang means bed and qian in
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 
they're describing the position in relation to,

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so chuang qian literally bed
in front means in front of the bed

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next we have three characters "ming
yue guang",

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so ming means bright, yue means the moon, 
and guang means light

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so these three together mean bright
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
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
like" which in modern Chinese is hao xiang

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

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it means "is", then we have three characters
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
the Chinese put position words

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after the thing they're describing the position in
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
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
scene that Li Bai was describing

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

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that the ground outside the window was lit up and
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
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
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
modern Chinese word xi wang which means hope

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in this context we can translate the
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 
"di tou si gu xiang".

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

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then we have the character tou again meaning
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.


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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


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chuang qian ming yue guang,
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
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"
romanticism,

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


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and you know the Tang poet
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
got sent off on a mission

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to go and get to some province far away and they
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, 


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

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and its very romantic isn't it?


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



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