Jul 4, 2010

Listen to Shirley to Sing the Poem in English July 04, 2010
Listen to Shirley to Sing the Poem in Chinese July 04, 2010

Listen Shirley to Explain the Poem July 5, 2010 & Follow Me to Read It
Listen to Shirley to Read   the Poem and New Words July 05, 2010 & Follow Me to Read Them

See Shirley Created   Paintings and Calligraphy for the Poem July 03, 2010

Hi, friends, today, I would like to introduce a new Chinese classical poem ? Bie Dongda ? A Farewell Song For Dongda by Gao Shi (704 - 765) who is a poet and one of the 10 Jie Du Shi - a governor who was in charge of both civil and military things in one or more provinces in Tang Dynasty (618 - 907).

As only poet who was on this position, with a very positive life attitude, Gaoshi had written a lot of long poems to sing the landscape of the border area and the war fields, therefore, he was one of the most important and representative poets of heroism genre in Tang Dynasty.

This is a Juju - a poem of four lines, each containing of five or seven characters, with a strict tonal pattern and rhyme scheme. The poet wrote it for his friend Dong Da -- Dong Lanting who was a famous musician before he left for his traveling.   

As a small send-off poem, instead of writing it as a sad one as many poets did, Gao Shi made it full of the confidence and encouragement with an optimistic emotion. :-)   

I love this kind of positive life attitude, so, I chose it and created a piece of music to match it in Dec, 2005.

Today, when I have to make some new choice because of my bad health, in my heart, there is a very complex feeling.

One hand, it is full of the expectation of recovering my health as soon as possible, then to work as a pure artist some day. The other hand, there is also much scaring from the uncertain future that I will face by myself with a bad health... I would really like to encourage myself with something positive indeed. So, I chose this poem.

I have created some new paintings of plum blossoms, re-wrote the music, re-translated the content and re-made the record for you and myself.

I do hope that my effort will be a little bit help to you to learn Chinese language and culture.


MAIN MEANING OF THE PEOM :

Thousand miles yellow clouds are covering the sun,
the north wind blows the wild geese, the snow dances   quickly.
Don't worry no bosom friends on the road,
In the world, no one does not know you.

Translation By Beijing Star-light Translation Center:

A Farewell Poem to Dong Da by Gao Shi

The sun in dimly white,
the 1000-Li clouds yellow,
The cold wind blows the wild geese in drifting snow.
Don’t worry about any bosom friend ahead of road;
All over the native land,
everyone knows you.
  

NEW WORDS & CHINESE CHARACTERS:

Please hit any Chinese word that you need help, to see its Chinese pinyin, meaning, pronunciation and follow me to read it

别董大
高适(704-765)

千里黄云白日曛 - Qiānlǐ huángyún báirì xūn,,
北风吹雁雪纷纷 - běifēng chuī yàn xǔe fēnfēn。。
莫愁前路无知己 - Mòchóu qiánlù wú zhījǐ,
天下谁人不识君 - tiānxià shuírén bù shí jūn。


If you have any questions, comments and suggestions, please write to shirley@ebridge.cn or shirleyz004@yahoo.com. You are welcome to publish your opinions in Message Board as well.

Shirley Zhang
Written, Sung, Translated and Recorded on Sun, July 4, 2010/ Dec 4, 2005