In this second lesson, we are going to study another short poem learnt by many Chinese students in primary school: “Sympathy for the Peasants” written by Li Shen (772-846 CE) of the Tang Dynasty.

• Text and Background

悯农 mǐn nóng

锄禾日当午，chú hé rì dāng wǔ ， 
汗滴禾下土。hàn dī hé xià tǔ 。 
谁知盘中餐，shuí zhī pán zhōng cān ， 
粒粒皆辛苦。lì lì jiē xīn kǔ 。  

Meaning of each character

hoe grain sun right noon
sweat drip grain under soil
who know plate inside meal
grain(of rice)x2 all toil suffering

*for the underlined words, see Sense and Image / Language Tips for further explanations

And here is an English translation of the poem by Xu Yuanchong:

At noon they hoe up weeds;
Their sweat drips on the soil.
Who knows the rice that feeds
Is the fruit of hard toil!

The author of this poem may not be as famous as Du Fu or Li Bai regarding literature achievements, but he had a more successful political career than both of them, climbing all the way up to the highest post achievable by a commoner in feudal China, 宰相 zǎi xiàng (Prime Minister). It is told that he wrote this poem, together with another coupling poem with the same name(See Further Reading), in his late twenties when he was visiting his hometown and saw the hardship of the peasants working the field. The story didn’t end here, as his poem was later read by the emperor, who promoted Li for his noble qualities displayed in the poem. To this day, he is still often referred to 唐代悯农诗人 táng dài mǐn nóng shī rén (the Tang Dynasty poet who sympathized with the peasants).

This poem is very familiar to native Chinese, as it is one of the first poems taught in school. Since the agricultural industry used to be and still is one of the most important components of China’s economy (one survey says there are around 100 million farmers in China nowadays), this poem is often used to teach people of the hard works done by the farmers, the preciousness of food and that we should never waste even a tiny grain of rice. Many canteens in middle schools or even colleges would display the last two lines of this poem on walls and tables. If you plan to visit China, why not try and search for one of these posters. That’s the real “culture tour”!

And before you move on, here is, as usual, an audio clip for anyone wishing to practice reciting the poem:

• Rhyme and Rhythm

This poem follows the rhyme of 麌yǔ, listed as the seventh rhyme scheme of the rising rhymes in the Pingshui Rhyme Book. As you can perhaps see from the mark denoting the third tone in the pinyin of the rhymes wǔ, tǔ and kǔ, this poem is a departure from the mainstream form of the Tang Dynasty, the Regulated Verse style, which requires level rhymes (which generally translates to the first, as in wū, and second, wú, tones in Modern Chinese). Instead, this poem features a rising rhyme, thus giving the poem a unique tone and mood. In my personal opinion, the level rhymes give a more relaxing feel to the poem, while the other three rhyme schemes, rising, departing and entering, convey a more tense and harsher voice.

The rhythm follows the standard pattern for five-word-poems, 2/3, which means it is recommended to have a pause between the first two characters and the latter three in each line. The only exception may be the last line, in which the third character 皆jiē(all) can be seen as an independent part linking the first two words 粒粒lì lì (each grain of rice) and the last two 辛苦xīn kǔ (hard work).

• Sense and Image

Line 1 –
        Since this poem is titled Sympathy for the Peasants, it would be only natural for it to open with an image of the farmers working in the fields. Here in the first line, we get a basic idea of what they are doing and when is the action taking place.
        The first element is easy to spot: they are hoeing grain in the field. But wait! What does “hoeing grain” mean? Aren’t they supposed to plant them, not destroy them? One way to explain it is that the words 锄禾chú hé here may mean hoeing the weeds around the grain seedlings (hence the translation by Xu Yuanchong); or it may be pointing to the act of loosening the earth around the seedlings with a hoe; or that it is just a general way of saying that the farmers are working in the grain fields with hoes, without any specific meanings. One thing is for sure; they are not hoeing the precious grains.
        The time of the action is also pretty clear. 日当午rì dāng wǔ here tells us that it’s right about at noon and sun is at its central position overhead the farmer. Imagine yourself swaying a heavy hoe under a scorching sun. That’s the kind of work the farmers of this poem are doing. Their hard works do deserve our sympathies, don’t they?

Line 2 – 
        The second line continues the image established in the first. The poem now zooms in on the farmer and tells us that his sweat is dripping on the soil under the grains. The element of sweat strengthens the image of a burning sun, further showing the harsh environment in which the farmers have to work and earn a living. It also pushes an idea that the care of the farmers, here symbolized by their sweat, are not just spiritually imbued in the grains they grow, but physically helping their growth. As their sweat drips on the soil, it becomes nutrition and water for the seedlings.

Line 3&4 – 
        Most short poems like this one tend first to describe a situation, an event or a thing that moves the poet into writing about it, before revealing what it is that the poet felt or learnt from his or her observation. In this poem, the first two lines is an exposition of the hardship of the farmers, and in the third and fourth line, we see the poet’s thinking on the matter at hand.
        The two lines are one single sentence split into two, which is not uncommon for the ending of a poem when much is needed to be said, and they cannot fit into just five or seven characters.
        In the first half, we get an idea of what the poet is trying to talk about and how he proposes to tell it. 盘中餐pán zhōng cān (meal inside the plate) shows that the topic has now shifted from the grains grown in the field to those consumed by us in everyday life, and the words 谁知shuí zhī (who knows) signifies that a rhetorical question is being asked. Whenever a poet poses a rhetorical question like this, chances are he or she is hinting that “not many people know” what is going to be said in the following line.
        The real sting of the poem comes by the end, when we read that 粒粒lì lì, or “each grain of rice”, 皆辛苦 jiē xīn kǔ, “all comes from hard work by the farmers”. The impact of this enjambed line not only comes from the understanding that our food produce is precious because they come from other people’s hard work, but also from the revelation that not many of us can realize the fact that they are precious when we eat our daily meals, hence saying that the hard works of the farmers are often forgotten or completely ignored.
        Even though the meaning of the line and the whole poem are hopefully plain and simple by now, there is still one issue to note here. Namely, without knowing the context of the poem, this half-line by the end would seem very confusing because it is omitting many details we would expect from a complete and meaningful sentence. On the one hand, it uses 粒粒lì lì, or “each granule or each tiny bit of something” without specifying what it is describing. It is when combined with the third line that we would start to understand the thing it is pointing to: the grains of rice (or millets in some interpretations) eaten by Chinese people every day. Furthermore, the apparent incoherence between the subject of the line, grains of rice, and the rest of the description, that they are 皆/辛苦 jiē xīn kǔ (literally, all/hardship) would seem weird when viewed independently from the first three lines. How can rice be a hardship? Isn’t it simply a white, soft and filling thing? When you consider these possible questions, you will see the point of the whole poem: that just like the situation of a person being unable to understand the meaning of the last sentence, if he or she did not first expose themselves to the previous lines, describing the works of the farmers, one would similarly be unable to appreciate the works of these farmers if one wasn’t told of their great contributions and sacrifices to our seemingly easy and comfortable life. In short, the understanding of the last line depends on that of the rest of the poem, just like our appreciation of the bowl of rice on our kitchen table depend upon the knowledge of others hard works. You might ask then, what should we do to show our sympathies to the hard-working farmers? It’s quite simple. Just eat every grain of rice in your bowl!

• Language Tips

Traditional Chinese Version

憫農
鋤禾日當午，
汗滴禾下土。
誰知盤中餐，
粒粒皆辛苦。

The usages of prepositions in this poem, and in Chinese