This episode, the podcast takes a look at a poem Mao Zedong wrote in February 1936, after he and his party had undergone the near-death experience of the Long March. Yet still, Mao has the gumption to imply in the poem that he would be the greatest ruler China had ever seen. 

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My Translation:

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Original Poem

沁园春·雪

北国风光，千里冰封，万里雪飘。望长城内外，惟余莽莽；大河上下，顿失滔滔。山舞银蛇，原驰蜡象，欲与天公试比高。须晴日，看红装素裹，分外妖娆。

江山如此多娇，引无数英雄竞折腰。惜秦皇汉武，略输文采；唐宗宋祖，稍逊风骚。一代天骄，成吉思汗，只识弯弓射大雕。俱往矣，数风流人物，还看今朝。

AI Generated Transcript:

  My name is Lee Moore and this is the Chinese Literature podcast. Today we have a very cool episode for you. It’s a poem written by a dude. His name is, hang on, let me, let me check my notes here. But Ong, he wrote a poem called Spring in a Soaked Garden Snow. So kind of a two part name there. Spring in a Soaked Garden, snow Re.

But before we get into the discussion of that MAO poem, I first want to remind y’all my book China’s Backstory, the history of Beijing doesn’t want you to read, is coming out September 30th. I’m dropping this podcast either at the end of July or at the very beginning of August. I recorded this in July.

It was meant to be a July podcast, but I’m actually waiting on Word from my publishers Unsung Voices books. They’re finishing up right now as I speak with getting the pre-order page ready before. When I came onto the podcast, I would say, Hey, pre-order my book. But you weren’t really pre-ordering it, you were just giving my publishers your email.

So now at this very moment, you can go to the website and actually hand money to my publishers. I know this because I’m not gonna let this podcast drop until we have all our ducks in order, and y’all can do that. So if you go to the podcast website, that’s chinese literature podcast.com, you click on the button at the top that says, pre-order my book exclamation point.

That will take you to the publisher’s pre-order page for those of y’all who’ve already quote unquote, pre-ordered by giving unsung voices books your email address. So I think they’re gonna send you an email just letting you know to go to the site, and it should be available for you to, to actually give them your credit card information.

But if you are eagerly anticipating the book coming out, you can head over there right now. The book is called China’s Backstory, the History Beijing doesn’t want you to read. It takes a look at the four most important China related issues winding up in the news feeds of most Americans, Xinjiang, Taiwan, the Chinese economy, and Hong Kong.

This book is written by me, an expert if I do humbly say so myself. It’s, it’s not written for experts, it’s written for everyday folks. There’s no jargon. You don’t need to know anything about Chinese history though. If you’re listening to this podcast, you probably already know quite a bit about Chinese history.

The book is written to be fun. The Xinjiang section has a drinking game embedded in it. As I go through the history of Xinjiang, every time someone gets beheaded or otherwise loses their head, you if you are playing the drinking game. You’re supposed to take a shot and the history of Xinjiang is so violent that there are gonna be some sections you need to be careful about driving.

After reading the history of Taiwan section, I have a segment that’s titled The Gay Taiwanese Pirates Who Changed History. It’s how a group of Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese pirates, I don’t know how they would describe their identity, but rumor has it that they were literally in bed together, and that is.

Partially responsible for Taiwan. The island becoming a Chinese island. There’s another section titled, actually, I can’t really say it on the podcast, ’cause unlike the book, the podcast is family friendly. I try to keep the podcast clean, but this is a chapter in the Taiwanese section of the book. And if y’all listen to the podcast regularly, y’all are gonna be pretty good at reading between the lines.

So this. Segment in the Taiwan section of the book is called The Most Important Mother Flipper in Taiwanese history. All of that is to say this is not your typical, well-researched, boring China book written by an academic. This is a well-researched, funny, irreverent book on China written by an academic.

So go take a look at the website, chinese literature podcast.com. Click on pre-order. My book, exclamation Point, the book is coming out September 30th. If you pre-order now, we’ll send it out to you. Okay. I’m sick of promoting myself and bragging about how awesome me and my book are. Let’s turn to today’s poem, which is by Mao Zong, and it’s all about Mao bragging about how awesome he is.

So as I mentioned before, the poem’s called Spring in a Soaked Garden Snow. The poem was written in. February, 1936, though it was not published until November 14th, 1945. That was the first time it was published, but obviously Mao was still not in power until 1949. Uh, it gets republished in 1957. Let’s zero in on the.

Period in which it’s written. 1934, the Chinese Communist Party was in a bind from October, 1934 to October, 1935. The Communist Party participated in what’s. Called the Long March. They were forced to abandon their main base in southern China as Chiang Kai-shek successfully. Finally pushed them out of that base there, that, uh, Ong had been a leader in the CCP, didn’t know what to do.

They spent the next year marching from southern China to southwestern China. Then across the eastern edge of. Tibet and then they dropped into that communist base in North China. In Yan. Early on in the long march at the Sunni conference, Mao became the unquestioned leader of the CCPA position he would maintain for the rest of his life.

The CCP marched for a full year at nearly every turn. They were almost destroyed. The main CCP Army, that is the first red Army, they left their main base in southern China with 86,000 members in October, 1934. By the time they arrived at Nan, they had only 7,000 people left, so they had lost about 90% of the people in their army.

Looking back on this period, we can see this long March as a success story for the CCP because despite their massive losses, they found this new base in Northern China that kept them away from their main enemy. That was Chiang Kai Shk, and it gave them a chance to fight the Japanese who were. Gonna become hated colonizers.

The base that they found was isolated, which allowed the CCP to become this very powerful organization. A decade later, when the Japanese were defeated by America at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the CCP would emerge from a very strong position. They would come out of World War II hitting very hard and eventually.

They were able to take over the country and push Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan. But at the time, in 1936, it didn’t look like that. In February, 1936, Mao looked like he was just barely hanging on five months before his ragtag army of communists had limped into Yan. If I were a betting man, I would not in February, 1936, have put my money on Mao.

Looking back, it’s easy to underestimate how precarious the CCPs chances of survival. Were So, Mao writes this poem in classical Chinese Spring in a Soaked Garden snow. It is a poem that’s a style of Chinese poetry that became popular in the Song Dynasty. So from around nine 60 to 1279. In English.

Sometimes we call that a lyric or a song lyric, and here song is referring not to the dynasty, but to the thing that she’s sing. It’s all very confusing, but it makes for great puns. There’s a section in my book on the Song Dynasty. I called that section, new song. Same old tune. Sorry, I’m a dad, so I have to make dad jokes.

Okay, back to mouse poem. I’m just going to read you mouse. This is a poem here. This is my own translation. Spring in a soaked garden snow, the North Country scenery, frozen over for a thousand miles, snow floating for 10,000 miles. I look inside and outside the Great Wall of China. All that remains is Boundlessness, up and down the Yellow River.

It suddenly has lost its surging vigor. The mountains dance like silver snakes, the plains gallop like white elephants. I want to compete with heaven and see which of us is taller. I must wait for a clear day and look at the snowy landscape wrapped in red and white. It’s really but witching the rivers and mountains of this land.

They’re so pretty. It has brought out countless heroes to compete and to serve the nation. Pity the first Chinese emperor and Han Wdi, the greatest Han Emperor. Their writing ability ain’t all that good. Tongue tied own. The Greatest of the Tongue, emperors and Song, the greatest song Emperor. They kind of lack style.

Those northern barbarian rulers like Gingis Khan, all they knew how to do was shoot arrows at big eagles. Those guys are all dead. If you want to count the true bad mamma Jammas look. To today, so this is made up of two parts. If you want to put eyeballs on the original, along with my translation while I’m talking about it, check out the website, chinese lite