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A qilü

1961

At the Lushan meeting in 1959, criticism of the Great Leap Forward was silenced and Peng Dehuai, Mao’s chief critic, was denounced and sacked from all his posts. However, Mao was forced to yield economic management to Liu Shaoqi, who effected a retreat from the Great Leap. Mao’s prestige was diminished by his failure. He knew that his leadership was under threat, and hints in this poem at his mixed feelings.

White clouds fly over Mount Jiuyi;

catching the wind, the Emperor’s daughters ride down to the blue-green hills.

Previously they wet the mottled bamboo with a thousand tears,

but now the red-tinged clouds adorn them in a hundred folds of cloth.

On Dongting Lake, the snow-flecked waves surge skyward,

and people on Long Island sing earth-shaking songs.

I wish to dream boundlessly

of the land of the hibiscus, bathed in the morning sun.

_______________

Line 1: In Ningyuan, Hunan.

Line 3: A borrowing of a line by Hong Sheng.

Line 5: In the north of Hunan.

Line 6: Also known as Orange Isle, in the Xiangjiang River west of Changsha. See Poem 1, ‘Changsha’.

Line 8: Another name for Hunan, Mao’s native province.