[SHL] Zhou Zi Shu 周子舒 and Wen Ke Xing 温客行 name analysis
I know SHL is a small fandom but I feel like it deserves a names analysis post. I love how script writers have incorporated such beautiful, well researched lines of Chinese poetry from different time periods into the drama. The two main characters’ names are assigned couplets which we’ll explore below.
Zhou Zi Shu 周子舒
执子之手，坐看云舒（zhí zǐ zhī shǒu, zuò kàn yún shū）means “holding your hands, sitting and watching the clouds unfurl”.
It derives from two lines of poetry.
The first comes from the 《诗经》 Classic of Poetry, or Shih-ching, dating back to the Zhou 周 Dynasty (coincidence much?): 执子之手，与子偕老 means “holding your hand, growing old beside you”. It was a pledge said by a soldier to his wife whilst he was fighting a seemingly endless war. Nowadays, it is almost always used in a romantic or matrimonial context.
The second part comes from 《小窗幽记》 by Han Dynasty writer Chen Ji Ru 陈继儒: 去留无意，漫随天外云卷云舒 means “to be or not to be needs no hard decision, let nature take its course and the clouds gather and unfurl at will”.
Wen Ke Xing 温客行
天涯孤鸿，无根行客（tiān yá gū hóng, wú gēn xíng kè）means “a solitary swan at the ends of the earth, a drifting wanderer with no roots”.
It also derives from two lines of poetry.
孤鸿 originates from 《咏怀诗》, written in the Three Kingdoms 三国 period by the poet Ruan Ji 阮籍. It means a lone swan, referring to the wild swan geese that formal monogamous pair bonds for many years. A solitary swan is known for its sorrowful cry, and the phrase is often used in poetry to lament one’s loneliness.
The second part comes from 《忆少年·别历下》, written in the Northern Song 北宋 Dynasty by philosopher Chao Bu Zhi 晁补之: 无穷官柳，无情画舸，无根行客 means “endless rows of willow trees by the road side, boats sweeping by heartlessly carrying drifting wanderers with no roots”. It is part of a poem written to depict the poet’s sadness when leaving Li Xia town, lamenting how when he next returns, time would have flown by like a dream, leaving his loved one’s hair to turn white and no more vitality of youth.
Reflections
I can’t help but notice how strongly these two lines of poetry for each character match their personalities. ZZS has seen through the vanities of the world and has accepted whatever will be will be, eventually finding a soulmate he is willing to grow old with. On the other hand WKX hides his real name and motives, coping with loneliness and taking many trials and tribulations to fully trust even his soulmate. He masks his remorse and revenge behind a smiling and confident outer shell, until he slowly finds himself revealing his inner turmoil and vulnerability to ZZS.
It is almost 中秋节, Mid-Autumn Festival This year it is celebrated on the 1st of October 2020, which is also, 十一 , the PRC National Day of China. During this festival, Chinese get together with their families and eat moon cakes and look upon the moon.
I promised you that I would share some poems with you. This is a poem about missing the family reunion of the festival. It describes how beautiful it is, in a quiet yet sad way. The sadness and longing is very prominent. I cannot celebrate the festival with my family this year either, so I feel deeply connected to this poem. I hope everyone who celebrates can be with their 家人 family (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡
(Here’s another poem that warns against procrastination. It is very similar to “Song of Tomorrows” (《明日歌》) in terms of meaning in the second half. A link to the translation for that poem here.)
Gold Embroidered Garment
By Unknown Poet (Tang dynasty, between 7th to 10th century)
A caution to thee against the gold embroidered garments (1),
And an advice to value thy youthful years.
Cut the flowers whilst they are still blooming,
For when they wither only bare stems shall remain.
—————————-
Notes:
Gold embroidered garments: a metaphor for riches, or an affluent lifestyle.
Wu Zao (or Wu Tsao) is considered one of the great female poets of China, and one of the greatest lesbian poets of all time. Very little of her work has been translated into English, but the most beautiful translations are the handful by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung (the above being the best of the bunch, IMO).
Born in 1799, Wu Zao was the child of a merchant, and married to a merchant (in an arranged marriage, naturally). Both relationships are believed to have been unhappy. There were no literati in either family, and no one knows how she learned to read, write, play music and paint, since women of the merchant class were rarely taught these skills. A common dictum in the era was “A woman without talent is a virtuous one.” She basically said, “Fuck that noise,” and became a productive and talented poet, playwright and composer; one of the few female writers of the period. She used her writing to express her longing to break away from a traditional view of women’s roles, including an opera about a woman who cross-dresses and paints her own self-portrait, while lamenting her inability to use her talents because she is a woman and the gender roles of the era are stupid.
Her work was highly praised by poets and scholars, and her songs were sung all over China. She hobnobbed with other great artists of the age, both male and female. In her middle years she retreated from the world and became a Taoist priestess. (Or a Buddhist one, depending on who you ask). She died in 1863.
It’s clear from her poetry that she had sexual and romantic relationships with women, but apart from the short biography by Rexroth and Chung in their book Women Poets of China, it’s impossible to find a biography in English that does more than hint at her lesbianism. According to them, she had many female friends and lovers during her life, and wrote erotic poems to several courtesans, including this one. After reading it, I like to imagine her and Ch'ing Lin hanging out in her bedroom, painting each each other’s eyebrows and making out, like some kind of 19th century Chinese version of a sexy high school sleepover.
[Translation from Women Poets of China by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung; biographical information primarily from Women Poets of China, The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry andThe Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women].
Um, wow, this poem is an ABSOLUTE GEM.
Just wanted to add that one of the major reasons why the dictum “a woman without talent is a virtuous one” first appeared in 17th century China was due to the unprecedented flowering and increased publication and dissemination of women’s writing and a major rise in literacy among gentry women of the time. Combined with the poetic and artistic talents of the many women depicted in the classic A Dream of Red Mansions, published in 1791, who were explicitly stated to be inspired by the author Cao Xueqin’s female relatives and friends, I think Chinese women of the more privileged classes were definitely taking a serious interest in literary pursuits.
Men couldn’t take it, basically, and this misogynistic aphorism reflected patriarchy’s anxiety more than the state of women’s education. Basically, Wu Zao was joined by more noteworthy and paradigm-shifting women writers and artists saying “fuck that noise” than at any other time in Chinese history.
[One should also note, that the vast majority of the non-gentry population of the time, both men and women, were illiterate in the Classical Chinese reserved for poetry and politics.]
Historian Dorothy Ko’s article “Pursuing Talent and Virtue: Education and Women’s Culture in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century China” gives a fascinating overview of how these women viewed their own morality and education.
Thank you, this is a such a great addition to this post! I really appreciate the extra information about the period.
Ni Zan, Rongxi Studio, 1372, ink on paper. Ni Zan (1301-1374) is considered to be one of the four great masters of the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368). Despite this his output as an artist was very limited and he chose similar motifs for each piece, making him in a sense the original Chinese series painter. His work often included mountains, shelter, trees and water but executed in a sparing style which boarded on offhanded, however his sparse technique somehow exudes a wistful atmosphere which is unique in itself. As well as this Ni Zan was one of the pioneers in the concept of the three perfections, poetry, calligraphy and painting. Promoting the idea that a picture inscribed with a poem written in a complementary calligraphic style enhances the aesthetic accomplishment of the piece.
[Chinese poetry tag] 你是人间四月天 You are the April of this world - 林徽因 Lin Huiyin
Today we will be exploring a poem by one of my favourite historical figures and role models, 林徽因 Lin Huiyin. Born in 1904, Lin Huiyin was a renowned architect, historian, poet and intellectual who played a huge part in the restoration of Chinese cultural heritage sites and the design of the national emblem of the P.R.C.
I know many poems by her off by heart - she’s one of the few people who has successfully managed to fuse together the structures and tempo of English poetry and prose, with the ambiguous and emotive vocabulary of the Chinese language.
This is exactly what her close friends loved about her – Wilma and John K Fairbanks admired her for living on a “kind of double cultural frontier,” and facing the problem of “the necessity to winnow the past and discriminate among things foreign, what to preserve and what to borrow.”
She is probably best known for this poem below, called “You are the April of this world”, written in 1934. It is widely interpreted that the poem was written to either commemorate the death of 徐志摩 Xu Zhimo, another Chinese poet whom she had a whirlwind romance with in the UK, or the birth of her son (latter more likely from my perspective).
你是人间四月天
我说 你是人间的四月天；
笑响点亮了四面风；
轻灵在春的光艳中交舞着变。
你是四月早天里的云烟，
黄昏吹着风的软，星子在
无意中闪，细雨点洒在花前。
那轻，那娉婷，你是，
鲜妍百花的冠冕你戴着，
你是天真，庄严，
你是夜夜的月圆。
雪化后那片鹅黄，你像；
新鲜初放芽的绿，你是；
柔嫩喜悦，水光浮动着你梦期待中白莲。
你是一树一树的花开，
是燕在梁间呢喃，
——你是爱，是暖，
是希望，
你是人间的四月天！
Translations (by me)
You are the April of this world
I say, you are the April of this world;
Your laughter ignites the winds hither and thither;
Tinkling and dancing to the brilliant lights of spring.
You are the soft haze of April mornings,
Dusk blows the mellowness of the breeze,
The stars glittering subconsciously, fine rain drops sprinkle like wine amid the flowers.
That gentleness, gracefulness, is you,
It is you wearing a radiant crown of a hundred flowers,
You are innocence, dignity,
You are the full moon night after night.
Ivory swathes after melted snow, is like you;
New shoots of verdant green, is you;
Tender joy, the sparkling ripples carry long awaited white lotuses of your dreams.
