Expressing My Feelings, A Scholar Who Died While Traveling Mt. Shang

After Zu Yong’s grandson Jia failed his exams, he undertook a tour of Mt. Shang. One night, when the autumn moon was extremely bright, he lodged in an empty Buddhist temple. Suddenly a person emerged from behind the hall, saluted Jia, and respectfully sat down with him. They talked easily, conversing about the classics and chronicles, and he said, “This evening we came across each other by chance—it will be difficult to meet again, so I’ll bestow now two or three works expressing what’s in my heart.” Recitation complete, he recited them a second and third time. As the night was growing late, he then saluted and withdrew. The next day, Jia asked a neighbor, who said, “There, no one lives, not for several li in any direction, but there was a scholar who died there while traveling—he was buried at the Buddhist Hall up on the mountain, behind the south ridge.” Jia wrote down the story, hung it up, and departed.

1.
My home’s the station north of the road,
No neighbors for a hundred li.
Coming and going, none ask about me.
So silent, my mountain home in spring.

2.
South of the ridge, night’s bleak, so bleak—
Green pines and white poplar trees.
My family should have a dream of me …
If a guest gets over not stomaching it.

3.
The grasses white in Cold Dew season,
The mountain wild in the bright moonlight.
My bitter night recital complete,
This trembling candle and you are alike.

Zu Yong was a scholar-official active in the mid-700s, so this would have happened during the second half of the century. Translation trickiness: his grandson’s name 价 is pronounced both jià and jiè in modern Mandarin, depending on meaning; the reconstructed Tang pronunciation is gà, so I arbitrarily dubbed him Jia. The station where the ghost lives is one of the post-stations for travelers to rest, set up at regular distances along the major roads. Premodern China had two concurrent calendars, the well-known 12-month lunisolar one, used for most civil purposes, and a solar one with 24 periods, used for astronomic and divinatory purposes (including reckoning when to add a leap-month to the other calendar to keep it in synch with the solar year). Cold Dew is the name of one of the solar calendar periods, running 8-22 October. That said, it’s possible to read that line literally, that the grasses “inside” i.e. “under” the dew look white.

Oh, that last line. Totally stuck that landing.

---L.