Cheng Hsieh (1693–1765)
The boys of Ch’ien-t’ang practice riding the bore:
with firm poles and long oars they stroke and plunge!
One boy, alone, stands on each deck as if cast in iron,
face the color of ashes, his eyes unblinking, fixed.
The bore rolls in like a mountain—they shoot their boats ahead;
masts and sculls flip over sideways
as the boats stand up on end!
Then—suddenly, they all disappear, without a trace…
then reappear on the slow after-waves, a fleet of boats again.
Now the bore has gone down, the waves flow softly,
the boats follow the gulls.
The boys sing and laugh, the mountains are green,
the blue water laps the shore.
This is the way we all should go through the troubles of life:
put up with them while they last—calm waters lie ahead.
Translated by Jonathan Chaves
One of the Eight Eccentrics of Yang-chou, Cheng Hsieh had a highly distinctive style both as a painter and a calligrapher. His poetry is full of humor and has a bold search for unusual subject matter, though not without a noticeable moralizing tendency.
1. “An abrupt rise of the tide which breaks in an estuary, rushing violently up the channel” (The American College Dictionary). In China, the mouth of the Che River at Hangchow (also known as the Ch’ien-t’ang River at this location) is famous for this phenomenon (see selection 184).