Poets From China

"开辟鸿蒙，谁为情种？都只为风月情浓。"

"一个是水中月，一个是镜中花。"

"今风尘碌碌，一事无成。忽念及当日所有之女子，一一细考较去，觉其行止见识，皆出于我之上。何我堂堂之须眉，诚不若彼裙钗哉？实愧则有余，悔又无益之大无可如何之日也！当此，则自欲将已往所赖天恩祖德，锦衣纨绔之时，饫甘餍肥之日，背父兄教育之恩，负师友规谈之德，以至今日一技无成，半生潦倒之罪，编述一集，以告天下人：我之罪固不免，然闺阁中本自历历有人，万不可因我之不肖，自护己短，一并使其泯灭也。"

"字字看來皆是血，十年辛苦不尋常 。"

"Wherever he was, he made it spring."

"Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in's forte is the unhurried exploration of every nuance of a situation."

"侬今葬花人笑痴，他年葬侬知是谁？"

"Cao Xueqin is a master of language. His prose is so exquisite and aesthetically pleasing that it almost attains perfection in every way."

"It's a tragedy that a lot of people know more about Shakespeare than about Cao Xueqin."

"若云雪芹披阅增删，然则开卷至此这一篇楔子又系谁撰？足见作者之笔狡猾之甚。后文如此者不少。这正是作者用画家烟云模糊处，观者万不可被作者瞒蔽了去，方是巨眼。"

"A monkey's transformed body weds the human mind. Mind is a monkey—this, the truth profound."

"There was a rock that since the creation of the world had been worked upon by the pure essences of Heaven and the fine savours of Earth, the vigour of sunshine and the grace of moonlight, till at last it became magically pregnant and one day split open, giving birth to a stone egg, about as big as a playing ball. Fructified by the wind it developed into a stone monkey, complete with every organ and limb."

"One of the most skilled descriptive poets in all Chinese literature."

"I was very fond of strange stories when I was a child. In my village-school days, I used to buy stealthily the popular novels and historical recitals. Fearing that my father and my teacher might punish me for this and rob me of these treasures, I carefully hid them in secret places where I could enjoy them unmolested. As I grew older, my love for strange stories became even stronger, and I learned of things stranger than what I had read in my childhood. When I was in my thirties my memory was full of these stories accumulated through years of eager seeking. [...] I have sometimes laughingly said to myself that it is not I who have found these ghosts and monsters, but they, the monstrosities themselves, which have found me!"

"We must note that speaking truth to power has rewards as well as costs. People who dare to speak out about major public events may not receive tangible benefits, but they receive the very considerable rewards of high moral reputation among fellow Chinese as well as in the international community."

"In a totalitarian state, the purpose of politics is power and power alone. The "nation" and its peoples are mentioned only to give an air of legitimacy to the application of power. The people accept this devalued existence, asking only to live from day to day."

"In its actual power today, the Chinese regime is still far behind the U.S., and there is no chance of its becoming a world hegemon any time soon."

"In the conflict between survival of the flesh and dignity of the spirit, if we cower to preserve ourselves, we become mere zombies, despite our trappings of prosperity. If we stand up for our dignity, we live nobly, no matter how much we may risk or suffer."

"When a people like ours, who struggle with feelings of inferiority, have to face the facts of inadequate national strength, or of less than full respect from others, one way we try to feel better is to grab onto any piece of historical material that can make us proud."

"The nostalgia for Mao Zedong that we see in China today is in part a longing of the poor and downtrodden - the losers in the economic boom - for the egalitarianism an job security of the Mao era. But it is more than that. For the "patriots" in today's rabid nationalism, it is nostalgia for a time when China dared to say "no" to both of the world's superpowers, the Us.S. and the Soviet Union."

""Ultra-nationalism" stands naked as nothing but a euphemism for the worship of violence in service of autocratic goals - be they the terrorism and holy war of Islamic fundamentalists or the refusal of dictatorial systems to accept political democracy."

"Admittedly, righteousness is weak unless it is backed by power, but power devoid of righteousness is evil. If most people cast their lot with the latter, then evil will prey forever upon humankind, as wolves and tigers prey upon lambs."

"Other than pleasure-seeking and consumerism, it seems that the only fruit of our social development is a cancerous overgrowth of "the rational economic man": maximize personal gain, and that's all."

"China's post-totalitarian era has two distinguishing characteristics. First, the rulers still want desperately to hold on to their dictatorial system in the midst of a crisis of legitimacy. Second, society no longer approves of such a system of dictatorship. A spontaneously growing civil society is gradually coming into being, and, although it does not yet have the strength to change the existing system, the increasing pluralism of its economy and its values, like water dripping on stone, is gradually eroding our rigid political monism."

"In China's communist era, despite all of the rhetoric about internationalism and "liberation of mankind" during the Mao years, the regime, especially in its claims to legitimacy, has consistently stressed nationalism. Nationalism has taken different forms at different stages - an arrogant, bellicose style under Mao; a pragmatic, defensive style under Deng Xiaoping; and a resurgence of the arrogant, bellicose style under Jiang Zemin - but the underlying passions that shape the policies have always been caught up in a vicious cycle between self-abasement and self-aggrandizement."

"Resting beneath the mighty Communist regime is a civil society that remains weak. It doesn't have much courage and is not very sophisticated. As a civil society it is still in a nascent stage, and this is why we mus not expect it, in the near term, to produce a political organization that might replace the Communist regime."

"The political jokes people tell each other in private represent the conscience of the silent majority, and show us just how rotten are the foundations of post-totalitarian rule among the general public."

"Freedom. Freedom is at the core of universal human values. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom in where to live, and the freedoms to strike, to demonstrate, and to protest, among others, are the forms that freedom takes. Without freedom, China will always remain far from civilized ideals."

"The worship of violence marks a reversion to barbarism for human civilization. This reversion happens most easily inside autocratic political systems, and the extent of the return to caveman impulses in in direct proportion to the barbarity of the autocracy within which it takes place: the more barbaric the dictatorship, the more devoutly the people will worship violence."

"Power and money reign supreme in our nation today. Universities count for nothing, and scholarship and ideas count for even less. Love, truth, and sacrifice are meaningless concepts, while betrayal and collective amnesia are taken as a matter of course."

""Elegy to Lin Zhao, Lone Voice of Chinese Freedom" (2004)"

"I hope that I will be the last victim in China's long record of treating words as crimes. Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth."

"My view as a Chinese is that Obama's elevation to the position of 44th president of the United States underscores the greatness of the American system."

"my mother did the chant of Fa Mu Lan. I learned to talk by repeating those things. I never knew, until I got to college and was taking an Asian Lit class, that that was important poetry. I just thought it was my parents' tales. My brothers thought, oh, those are just village ditties. They sing that on the farm. And then I thought later, oh, Tu Fu and Li Po-this is important stuff."

"His poems do not as a rule come through very well in translation."

"Tu Fu is, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a majority of those qualified to speak, the greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet who has survived in any language."

"When we were young, we have to memorize those texts from Tu Fu and others. And my grandmother used to carry me on my back and chant to me Chinese poems and sayings. The first kind of poetry I heard was Chinese poetry, and it ingrained in my ear, even though English is my main language. I can hardly read Chinese. The Chinese poem was ingrained in me when I was very young."

"飯顆山頭逢杜甫，頭戴斗笠日卓午。 借問別來太瘦生，總為從前作詩苦。"

"China's greatest poet."

"Tu Fu was the master stylist of regulated verse, the poet of social protest, the confessional poet, the playful and casual wit, the panegyricist of the imperial order, the poet of everyday life, the poet of the visionary imagination. He was the poet who used colloquial and informal expressions with greater freedom than any of his contemporaries; he was the poet who experimented most boldly with densely artificial poetic diction; he was the most learned poet in recondite allusion and a sense of the historicity of language. One function of literary history is to account for a poet’s identity; Tu Fu’s poetry defies such reduction: the only aspect that can be emphasized without distorting his work as a whole is the very fact of its multiplicity."

"A visible darkness grows up mountain paths; I lodge by the river gate high in a study, Frail cloud on a cliff edge passing the night. The lonely moon topples amid the waves; Steady, one after another, a line of cranes in flight. Howling over the kill, wild dogs and wolves. No sleep for me. I worry over battles— I have no strength to right the universe."

"Clear waters wind Around our village, With long summer days Full of loveliness; Fluttering in and out From the house beams The swallows play; Waterfowl disport together As everlasting lovers; ... What more could I wish for?"

"Tonight my wife must watch alone the full moon over Fu-zhou; I think sadly of my sons and daughters far away, too young to understand this separation or remember our life in Chang'an. In fragrant mist, her flowing hair is damp; In clear moonlight, her jade-white arms are cold. When will we lean at the open casement together while the moonlight dries our shining tears?"

"Birds the more white, against green stream Blooms burst to flame, against blue hills I glance, the spring is gone again. What day, what day, can I go home?"

"君不見青海頭 古來白骨無人收 新鬼煩冤舊鬼哭"

"Nature ever calls people to live Along with her; why should I be lured By transient rank and honours?"

"朱門酒肉臭路有凍死骨"

"無邊落木蕭蕭下，不盡長江滾滾來。"

"好雨知時節，當春乃發生。 隨風潛入夜，潤物細無聲。"

"人生不相見，動如參與商。 今夕復何夕，共此燈燭光。 少壯能幾時，鬢髮各已蒼。 訪舊半爲鬼，驚呼熱中腸。 焉知二十載，重上君子堂。 昔別君未婚，兒女忽成行。 怡然敬父執，問我來何方。 問答乃未已，兒女羅酒漿。 夜雨剪春韭，新炊間黃粱。 主稱會面難，一舉累十觴。 十觴亦不醉，感子故意長。 明日隔山嶽，世事兩茫茫。"