Li Ch’ing-chao (1084–c. 1151)
Stepping down from the swing,
Languidly she smooths her soft, slender hands,
Her flimsy dress wet with light perspiration—
A slim flower trembling with heavy dew.
Spying a stranger, she walks hastily away in shyness:
Her feet in bare socks,
Her gold hairpin fallen.
Then she stops to lean against a gate,
And looking back,
Makes as if sniffing a green plum.
Translated by Jiaosheng Wang
Li Ch’ing-chao is universally recognized as China’s greatest woman poet and one of the foremost lyricists in her own right. She was born in Li-ch’eng (modern Tsinan in Shantung province) of an outstanding literary family. Her father was a noted writer of prose and a literary associate of Su Shih (see selection 127). Her mother, also a poet, was descended from a distinguished family. Li Ch’ing-chao was already recognized as a talented voice in her adolescence. In 1101 she married Chao Ming-ch’eng, a student in the imperial academy. The couple shared compatible tastes in literature, painting, and calligraphy, and she wrote warmly of their mutual joys. Later, however, she experienced the traumatic events surrounding the fall of the Northern Sung to the Jürchen and the transfer of the dynasty to the Southern Sung. This dislocation was attended by much personal loss (see selection 170), and she wrote sensitively of her suffering and sadness during this period.
Tune: “Magnolia Flowers” (short version)
Li Ch’ing-chao
From the flower vendor I bought
A sprig of spring just bursting into bloom—
Sprinkled all over with teardrops
Still tinged with traces of
Roseate clouds and morning dew.
Lest my beloved should think
I’m not so fair as the flower,
I pin it slanting in my cloud hair,
And ask him to see
Which of us is the lovelier:
The flower or I.
Translated by Jiaosheng Wang
Tune: “Fisherman’s Pride”1 A Dream
Li Ch’ing-chao
Billowing clouds surging across the heavens
Merge into dawn’s hazy mist.
Sails in their thousands toss and dance
As the Milky Way recedes.
In a vision I find myself before the Heavenly Ruler,
Who asks solicitously
Where I wish to be off to.
“My journey is a long one,” I reply.
“The sun is setting all too soon.
And my brilliant poetic attempts, alas!
Have come to no purpose.”
Presently a whirlwind rises, and lo!
The Mighty Roc2 is winging to the Empyrean
On a flight of ninety thousand tricents.
Blow, O Whirlwind! Blow on without cease.
Blow my tiny craft to the three far-off isles3
Where the Immortals dwell.
Translated by Jiaosheng Wang
1. Among Li Ch’ing-chao’s lyric poems, this one is unique in style and content. Written probably after the fall of the Northern Sung dynasty, when she found herself an exile in South China with all her hopes and aspirations frustrated, it is a work of pure romance, conceived in a trance, and worthy of the greatest masters of romantic lyric poetry. It shows the versatility of her genius in producing a masterpiece in a style other than that of the elegantly restrained lyric of which she was generally recognized as the foremost exponent. Among its most enthusiastic admirers was Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, a great essayist and critic in the last years of the Ch’ing dynasty.
2. A fabulous bird first described in the works of Chuang Tzu (see selection 8). When migrating to the South Seas it is said to strike the waters for three thousand tricents before soaring to a height of ninety thousand tricents on a whirlwind. Hence the popular saying “Roc’s Journey” used by Chinese to this day to congratulate someone embarking on a career of lofty aspirations.
3. The three legendary isles, P’eng-lai, Fang-chang, and Ying-chou in the Po-hai Sea.
A Long Melancholy Tune (Autumn Sorrow)1 Despair
Li Ch’ing-chao
Searching, seeking,2
Seeking, searching:
What comes of it but
Coldness and desolation,
A world of dreariness and misery
And stabbing pain!
As soon as one feels a bit of warmth
A sense of chill returns:
A time so hard to have a quiet rest.
What avail two or three cups of tasteless wine
Against a violent evening wind?
Wild geese wing past at this of all hours,
And it suddenly dawns on me
That I’ve met them before.
Golden chrysanthemums in drifts—
How I’d have loved to pick them,
But now, for whom? On the ground they lie strewn,
Faded, neglected.3
There’s nothing for it but to stay at the window,
Motionless, alone.
How the day drags before dusk descends!
Fine rain falling on the leaves of parasol-trees—
Drip, drip, drop, drop, in the deepening twilight.
To convey all the melancholy feelings
Born of these scenes
Can the one word “sorrow” suffice?4
Translated by Jiaosheng Wang
1. In this poem, Li Ch’ing-chao expresses her sentiments with rapidity and abandon but none of the characteristics of the elegant, restrained style in which most of her lyrics are written. The poem is in fact rather like a rhapsody that recalls to mind Ou-yang Hsiu’s famous prose-poem “Autumn Sounds” (see selection 174).
2. This masterpiece of Li Ch’ing-chao’s is admired, among other things, for the three groups of reiterated characters at the beginning of the poem. The three groups are ingeniously interrelated, with the second group being the result of the first, and the third the result of the second. This arrangement heightens the pathos.
3. Some commentators interpret the above lines as follows:
“Golden chrysanthemums in full bloom,
Their fallen petals in drifts—
Who would pick them
Now I’m withered and worn?
On the ground they lie strewn, neglected.”
4. Instead of using hyperboles in the conventional way, Li Ch’ing-chao shows great creativity in saying that the word “sorrow” is inadequate to convey a multitude of melancholy feelings.
Tune: “Spring at Wu Ling”1 Spring Ends
Li Ch’ing-chao
The wind has subsided,
Faded all the flowers:
In the muddy earth
A lingering fragrance of petals.
Dusk falls. I’m in no mood to comb my hair.
Things remain, but all is lost
Now he’s no more.
Tears choke my words.
I hear Twin Brooks2 is still sweet
With the breath of spring.
How I’d, too, love to go for a row,
On a light skiff.
I only fear at Twin Brooks my grasshopper of a boat
Wouldn’t be able to bear
Such a load of grief.3
Translated by Jiaosheng Wang
1. Written in 1135, six years after her husband’s death, when the poet was living at Chin-hua in today’s Chekiang province as a temporary refuge from the Jürchen invasion.
2. A stream in the southeast of Chin-hua often visited by poets in T’ang and Sung times as a scenic resort.
3. A line (three lines in the format presented here) famed for the beauty and freshness of its imagery.