Welcome to the first lesson of this step-by-step guide to Chinese classical poetry! We will start with “Ode to the Goose” written by Luo Binwang (619-687 CE) from Tang Dynasty.

• Text and Background

咏鹅 yǒng é

鹅，鹅，鹅， é ， é ， é ，

曲项向天歌。 qū xiàng xiàng tiān gē

白毛浮绿水， bái máo fú lǜ shuǐ

红掌拨清波。 hóng zhǎng bō qīng bō

Meaning for each character

Goose goose goose

Bend neck towards sky sing

White feather float green water

Red foot push clear wave

Many scholars in China have attempted to translate this poem into English, with varying choices on forms and meters. Some of them can be found in this blog post: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4fbe5af80100onmf.html.

Looks pretty simple, doesn’t it? That is because this short poem was written by Luo at the age of 7! Even by ancient China standards, with 8-years-old philosophers and 12-years-old prime ministers (that’s Laozi and Gan Luo, respectively), this is a young age to be a poet. Although the poem may not have any excellent metaphors or profound connotations, it still constitutes a vivid and lovely depiction of what the child poet saw in a pond.

Another bit of background knowledge about this poem: while it may not be one of the greatest poems by artistic standards, it holds the glory for being the very first poem most of the Chinese pupils learn in schools. In other words, this is the starting point of traditional poetry learning for many native Chinese. If you read the first line of this poem, “é, é, é”, in front of any Chinese old enough to have finished their elementary education, chances are that they would be able to recite the rest of the poem fluently.

Before we move on to a more detailed assessments of the poem’s structures and images, please take a moment to listen to this Mandarin recital of the poem; and if you may, read along with it, as the artistry of Chinese poetry, like that of any other culture’s, cannot be fully appreciated without voicing it aloud.

• Rhyme and Rhythm

This poem follows the rhyme of 歌(ge), the fifth one of lower-level rhyme scheme listed in Pingshui Rhyme Book. A learner of Mandarin might find the last word 波 bō, with its pinyin vowel of “o”, to be weird. In fact, it’s not the sound of the last rhyme but rather that of the first two that should be taken with a grain of salt. You see, the sound of “e”, as in 歌 gē or 鹅 é, used to be pronounced similar to that of “o” in ancient Chinese, which is still kept the same in many southern dialects today. The distinction made out in pinyin is not reflective of how the words were really pronounced when this poem was written. You will encounter many such examples in future lessons. But for now, please just keep in mind that pinyin does not always have the final say on what rhymes and what not.

When reading or reciting Chinese poems, rhythm is a very crucial yet often overlooked element. Many would just follow a monotonous tone, giving an evenly paced length for each and every word. However, as the above audio clip shows, in order to best deliver the senses and images of the poem we read, correct pauses at the right moments are indispensable. The rules governing them are actually pretty simple: one sense at a time.

In practice, 5-word poems often just have three patterns of rhythm: it’s either 2/3, 2/2/1, or 2/1/2, with the exact choice dependent upon the division of meanings in the specific line. For example, in this poem, the second line can be read with 2/3 rhythm because the first two words, qū xiàng(bending the neck) describes the gesture of the goose, while the following three words xiàng tiān gē (sings toward the sky) is a depiction of what it was doing, forming a scission between the two groups of meanings. Therefore, it would only be natural if we pause in between when reading them. Similarly, the following two lines of the poem are usually read as 2/1/2, with their standard Subject-Verb-Object structure providing a natural split in rhythms.

• Sense and Image

Line 1 – There are multiple interpretations for this line, even though (or rather, because) it only consists of three repeated characters, é. One way to read it is that the thrice-written word shows the poet’s delight at seeing a goose, so much so that he repeatedly yelled out its name in excitement (just a reminder, he was just 7 when he wrote this, so maybe it was his first encounter with a living goose). Another way of viewing it considers the line to be an onomatopoeia for the sounds of the goose. The second line, which describes the gesture of the goose singing towards the sky, lends some authenticity to interpreting the first as a description of the sound produced in the process.

Line 2 – The image conveyed with this line is indeed straightforward, the goose bends its neck while singing to the sky. But notice how the poet with just the first two words, qū xiàng, accurately captures the iconic pose of the goose, which, unlike roosters or ducks, tend always to bend its neck when it is most relaxed and comfortable.

Lines 3&4 – This couplet is what gives this poem its greatest artistic values. At a glance, these two lines contain four colours, white, green, red and clear(or colourless), as well as four objects, feather, water, feet and wave. Apart from the fabulous palette of natural sceneries, the way they are aligned, both lines following the structure of adj-noun-verb-adj-noun, showcases an essential characteristic of traditional Chinese poetry: the love for parallel structures and symmetrical verses.

The Chinese culture is indeed fond of the antithetical coupling of images, with yin and yang as perhaps the most famous one. In poetry, the employment of an identical structure filled with related images in two continuing lines is not only valued for its symmetrical artistry and skillfulness, but in some cases even deemed compulsory. For example, the Regulated Verse style first popularized in the Tang Dynasty is famous for its strict(and therefore delicate) structure of having two couplets (that’s half of the poem!) with identical structures in its 8-line body. In short, the couplet structure helps convey a symmetrical image and is often viewed as a sublime demonstration of ars poetica.

• Language Tips

Traditional Chinese Version

詠鵝

鵝，鵝，鵝，

曲項向天歌。

白毛浮綠水，

紅掌撥清波。

Most of the expressions in this poem are plain and simple and can be found in modern day Chinese usages, with one exception being the pair of characters “曲项”(qū/xiàng, bend/neck) in line 2. Nowadays, the character 弯wān or the word 弯曲wān qū is used instead for meanings like “to bend” or “being curved”, while on the other hand one’s neck is no longer referred to as 项xiàng, but as 脖子bó zǐ or more formally as 颈部 jǐng bù. The two characters still retain their original meanings in some proverbs and, as we see here, poetry.

• Further Reading

Continuing our discussion on symmetrical verses, here are some extra readings that would hopefully further your understanding of this type of wordplay. The following lines are quoted from 笠翁对韵 Liweng Duiyun(“Couplets in Rhymes written by Liweng(an old man in a straw hat)“). Although they are not exactly poems, the examples contained in them are often the building blocks for poetry composition.

天对地，tiān duì dì，

雨对风，yǔ duì fēng，

大陆对长空。dà lù duì cháng kōng。

山花对海树，shān huā duì hǎi shù，

赤日对苍穹。chì rì duì cāng qióng。

With each line, we are given a pair of words or images that stand opposite to each other. The first one, for example, reads “heaven as opposed to earth”. What it means is that when we wish to write an antithetical couplet like the one in lines 3-4 of the Goose poem, we could use one image of the pair in the first line, and the other in the second line’s corresponding position. It would look somewhat like this: 天XXXX，地XXXX.

Now, challenge yourself to the meanings of the rest of these pairs, and think about what constitutes a pair of images. Share your thoughts in the comment section if you wish. And if you can’t figure it out now, don’t worry! We’ll encounter enough of these couplets in future lessons that you will gradually and naturally gain an understanding of them.

• That’s all for this week’s lesson. Next week, we are going to read another household classic. Spoiler alert: you might want to cook some rice for this one.