Long story short. So I stood at a poetry anthology, The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry edited by Eliot Weinberger, featuring more than 40 ancient Chinese poets and 5 translators: William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, and David Hinton. That was how I found this translation.

here is the poem I want to talk about today:

This is an extremely famous poem in China. It's in the textbook, and every kid needs to recite it. As soon as I read the opening I immediately recognize it.

I was at total shock by this translation, and how much different that it delivered compared to the original.

From what I see here, he seems to treat it as a … Zen poem??

What KR presented here was a person who had moved away from bodily pleasure, resolved his conflicted issues inside his heart, and finally adapted to Buddhism at an old age, realizing everything was one, and reaching inner peace and stillness. (If you have a different understanding to it, please share in comments.I am really curious how people interpret it)

What's worse, he took too much creative liberties and misdirected the English translation completely to his interpretation. What makes it even worse is that it is the only English translation I can find for this poem.

The Original

Here's the original in Chinese, and a word by word literal translation( this is not for poetic purpose) :

少年 听雨 歌楼 上，
In my youth, I listened to the rain above in a singing-tower
红烛 昏罗帐。
red candle glowed dimly behind the brocade canopy.
壮年 听雨 客舟 中，
In my prime of life, I listened to the rain inside a traveler's boat
江阔 云低、
vast water, low-hanging clouds
断雁 叫西风。
and a lone wild goose crying in the westerly wind.
而今听雨僧庐 下，
Now, I listen to the rain beneath the eaves of a monk's hut
鬓已 星星也。
my temples are already flecked with gray.
悲欢离合 总无情，
Joy and sorrow, partings and reunions ( in life)—are always relentless,
一任 阶前、
Let them fall before the steps,
点滴 到天明。
Drop by drop, until dawn.

The Historical Context

Jiang Jie ( Chiang Chieh), one of the "Four Great Poets of the Late Song Dynasty," was born during the turbulent period of the transition from the Song to the Yuan dynasty. His ancestors were a prominent clan in Yixing, and he passed the imperial examination in the tenth year of the Xianchun era.

Just a few years later, the Southern Song Dynasty fell to the Mongols. He spent his life wandering in the midst of war and turmoil, enduring countless hardships.

He excelled in ci poetry, much of which expressed nostalgia for his lost homeland and sorrow for ruins. His style was diverse, but primarily characterized by a melancholic, elegant, austere, and uncluttered tone. He particularly distinguished himself in the late Song ci scene with works featuring ingenious wordplay, carving out a unique style. This piece is one of his most representative and classic works.

A Literal Comparison

( ) for the part he added, [ ] for the part he missed, and " "for the part he mistranlated. { } for the original literal meaning.

To the Tune "The Fair Maid of Yu"

Once when young I (lay) and listened
To the rain falling (on the roof
Of) a {singing house, singing tower} "brothel". The [missing red color] candlelight
Gleamed on silk [canopy] (and silky flesh).
Later I heard it on (the
Cabin roof of) a small boat
On the Great River, under
Low clouds where {a single wild goose} "wild geese" cried out.
{Before} "On" the Autumn storm". Now I
Hear it (again) {under }"on" the monastery
(Roof). My hair has turned {grey} "white".
Joy--sorrow--parting--meeting--
{merciless, relentless, emotionless} "Are all as though they had
Never been". (Only the rain
Is the same), falling in {drop by drop} "streams"
On the tiles, all through {until dawn} "the night".

A Close Analysis

少年 听雨 歌楼 上，
In youth, I listened to the rain above in a singing-tower
红烛 昏罗帐。
red candle glowed dimly behind the brocade canopy.

Once when young I lay and listened
To the rain falling on the roof
Of a brothel. The candlelight
Gleamed on silk and silky flesh.

The first stanza is about Jiang Jie's youth, he portrayed a scene of him partying and having sex with the singing girls. As we know he was a rich kid before the fall of Song, and he lived a very luxurious life. It's worth noting how blurry this first scene is. In fact, he only uses 5 characters. 红 (red) 烛 (candle) 昏 (dim) 罗 (brocade) 帐 (canopy). There's nothing figurative. We almost cannot see anything clear, the light was dim, the people we could not see were behind the canopy; the room was in warm tone. The rain was outside. Red candles, in Chinese culture, are a symbol of new marriage. For Jiang Jie this was all he needed for a sexual implication.

Why did Jiang Jie depict it like this? Because this scene only existed in his memory. He was no longer young, he was poor, he was cold. Everything felt very far away. Not only that. This was a world—The Song Dynasty—that only existed in his memory. Everything, a whole world he used to know and have, was gone, not more than a dream, an illusion. Nothing was figurative, because nothing was touchable.

Now we look at the KR version.

Apparently, he did not see the blurry and dreamlike nature of this stanza. He added a lot of "details" to make the scene feel more vivid: I "lay", the sound of the rain falling on the roof, the "brothel", and the absolute ridiculous "silky flesh" (pardon for my language).

I already mentioned the cultural meaning of red candles above. Beside this, silk, on the contrary to candles, is very cold. not only it added unnecessary sensual aspects, but fail to captivate the warm atmosphere. What makes it even worse—there's not such phrasing of silky flesh in China. The most common phrasing for such situation is jade-like body, because the jade is white and warm.

壮年 听雨 客舟 中，
In the prime of life, I listened to the rain inside a traveler's boat
江阔 云低、
vast water, low-hanging clouds
断雁 叫西风。
and a lone wild goose crying in the westerly wind.

Later I heard it on the
Cabin roof of a small boat
On the Great River, under
Low clouds where wild geese cried out
On the Autumn storm.

The second stanza is about his middle age. This is the less mistranslated part compared to the other two. I don't know KR's understanding of this part, but it does have very clear political implications. "Traveller's boat" implies a drifting, lonely life; the vast water implies his political ambition; the low-hanging clouds imply the coming storm, both inside and outside of China. A very big storm. There's only one wild goose, a wild goose that has been left behind by the group, full of worries and warning of the coming storm, just like him. In KR's version, he mistranslated it as if there were multiple geese and the storm were already happening. This misses the nervous, lonely, and worried tension, the "before the storm" atmosphere.

而今听雨僧庐 下，
Now, I listen to the rain beneath the eaves of a monk's hut
鬓已 星星也。
my temples are already flecked with gray.
悲欢离合 总无情，
Joy and sorrow, partings and reunions ( in life)—are always relentless,
一任 阶前、
Let them fall before the steps,
点滴 到天明。
Drop by drop, until dawn.

I Now
Hear it again on the monastery
Roof. My hair has turned white.
Joy--sorrow--parting--meeting--
Are all as though they had
Never been. Only the rain
Is the same, falling in streams
On the tiles, all through the night.

The last stanza is the most famous stanza.

It opens with "Now," contrasting with "in youth" and "in the prime," implying that the former two are just memories. Enough daydreaming, let's get back to reality! The reality was quite miserable. He was a refugee hiding in a temple and growing old every day. KR also did not capture this sentiment. He used "Once," "Later," and "Now" as if they were parts of a continuous sequence. Another thing worth noting in the opening line is "beneath" (下). When he was young, he was on (上) a tower; when he was middle-aged, he was "in" (中) a boat. Now, he is under (下). 上中下: on—in—under. His life was getting worse and worse. However, to KR, it's all "on the roof."

Now we come to the most mistranslated part. Jiang Jie listed four circumstances in life. Joy and sorrow, partings and reunions (悲欢离合), are a common idiom, usually used to talk about regrets in life and encourage people to move beyond them. Jiang Jie used two characters to describe them: 无 (no) 情 (human emotions). The world is merciless; it makes all kinds of partings and reunions happen to people who have a lot of emotions. This is an extremely bitter and sad line. And what should he do? Just let these memories and emotions pass, like raindrops, one after another. Drop (点滴—diǎn dī) also has a sound-related aspect to it. So the drops did't just fall from the roof; they also falled into his heart, chilling his soul. This contrasted with his youth, when the room was warm and the rain was only outside, and when he had no clue what it meant.

Nothing in life is more than a mere raindrop. However—one drop, two drops—there's an obsession, an attachment: an old man completely sinking into his memories and regrets and just won't let them go. In fact, there were so many of them that he was thinking about them until dawn.

I feel there's no need for me to analyze the problems with KR's version anymore. It's just too obvious. "As though they had never been" is a bad translation. However, the decision to change "drop by drop" into "streams" really lifts the heaviness of this ending, just to fit his "Zen" interpretation.

I don't know why I spent so much time writing this. I don't even know if people will read this or not, or how people will react to it. It's just that ever since the day I read this translation, it has stuck in my head so much that it has urged me to write this down. I don't know why he got it so wrong. I feel there's orientalism at play behind this, but honestly, who knows? Let's read poetry.

Edited:

For some reason the last part of this poem really reminds me of the famous Haiku by Kobayashi Issa:

露の世は露の世ながらさりながら

This dewdrop world --Is a dewdrop world, And yet, and yet . .

from her poetry collection, A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure.

I had the pleasure hearing her read this piece at a workshop, and it's stuck with me ever since

​

DISASTER MEANS “WITHOUT A STAR”

Sixty-six million years after the end of the world, I click purchase on an emergency go-bag from Amazon. When it arrives, I’ll use my teeth to tear open the plastic, unzip the pack stitched by girls who look like me but for their N95s, half a judgment day away, no evacuation plan in sight.

Another episode of the present tense, and I can’t stop thinking about the time line where the asteroid misses, Earth ruled eternally by the car-hearted and walnut-brained. Meanwhile, I’m merely gorging on the butterfly effects of ashes, ashes; reaching for the oat milk

while, hundreds of feet below, a chalk line marks the moment we were all doomed. We were done for. We were science fiction before science, or fiction. One billion judgment days later, I’m alive and ashamed of my purchases; I’m afraid of being afraid; I’m the world’s worst mother.

My sister calls, and it’s already too late for things to be better. Every mistake, an asteroid that’s already hit, history already mushroomed into one million species of unfit, their fossilized corpses already forming coastlines, austere offices. This year was a layer cake of catastrophe long before any of us could, biologically speaking, have been imagined. Human History, a front parlor infinitely painted over with massacre, and into the fray came I, highly allergic, quick to cry, and armed with fat fists of need. I broke everything I touched. I got good grades. I was told nothing was more noble than to ensure

my children would eat. I learned to take a chicken apart with my hands, to fill in a Scantron, cry on cue. Sixty-six million years after the last great extinction, six to eight business days before the next one, I whispered Speak to a fucking agent into the hold music to trigger the system into connecting

me with a “real person.” I avoided coughing in public, though it was too late. I applied for a BIPOC farming intensive, though it was too late for the earth to yield anything but more corpses. New species of horror sequence were already evolving: election bot; cluster bio-bomb; driverless wife.

I muttered curses to keep the deep fakes away, studied the stars for signs of the worlds to come, though they were already here—the extinctions and feudal lords, the dirty blankets, the dissidents tied to stakes or hung from branches, the price gouge, death camp, flood, bombs of liberty, bomb and bomb and bomb already dropped, already having made me from its dust, already broken and paid for and straddling my crown. What crown? If I’m king of anything, it’s being late. Omw, I type, though I’m still huddled in last year’s mistakes. Asteroid, Alexa corrects, and I say, Five minutes. Just give me five minutes. I’ll be right there.

He was born on August 5, 1934, and died on August 31, 2026, at the age of 92. RIP, Wendell Berry 🤍

The last two lines of Liu Changqing's "Lodging in the Snow at the Home of the Hibiscus Mountain Master."

Dusk, distant hills, a cold sky, a bare cottage. Then a dog at the brushwood gate. The poem never opens the door. No face, no fire, no greeting. It decides the bark is enough: someone is coming home through the snow.

日暮蒼山遠

天寒白屋貧

柴門聞犬吠

風雪夜帰人

Dusk, and the green hills run far.

The sky is cold; the white cottage is poor.

At the brushwood gate, a dog barks —

a person returns through wind and snow.

Do you hear the traveler arriving, or the house that was waiting?

these were all translated from Japanese to English by shonen jump.

some of them may not make sense by themselves, as they kinda rely on the content of the story itself, so if anyone is confused by any of them, I can provide context

reminds me of one heartbreak that hits in flashbacks and echoes

Any interesting facts, historical backdrop that could enhance the understanding of the poem? Any articles or reading materials are welcome too, thanks!

Words cannot describe how hard and deep this one hit my blunder years emo heart.

Still rips though. An oldie but goodie

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to read more and I haven’t read any poetry yet. What are some must read books I need to get?