“Waiting for the Unicorn” | Open Indiana

Wei Yüan (Han-shih; Mo-shen; Mo-sheng) a native of Shao-yang, Hunan, was a versatile genius and something of a prophet of a new age. He wrote some of the finest landscape poetry in Chinese literature. “Nine-tenths of my poems deal with mountains and waters,” he said, and he left about a thousand poems. Yet his fame as a poet has been sharply eclipsed by his accomplishments as a historian, geographer, exegete of Confucian classics (he belonged to the “Modern Text” school), essayist, and political economist, as well as a student of Buddhism later in life. To add to the mystery and wide range of his life’s callings, he was also said by his contemporaries to have been the real author of a book of literary criticism, published under the name of his best friend and to which he had merely contributed a preface. The book, Shih pi-hsing-ch’ien, ostensibly by Ch’en Hang (1785–1826), was published in 1854.

Son of a minor Kiangsu official, Wei Yüan passed the hsiu-ts’ai examination at the age of fourteen, and so impressed his examiner when he passed the chü-jen examination, in 1822, along with the poet Kung Tzu-jen (q.v.), that the examiner wrote a poem in praise and recommendation of the two scholars. Yet Wei Yüan repeatedly failed the chin-shih examination; finally, in 1844, when he was fifty, he passed and was placed in the third class of graduates as the result of the Palace Examination a year later. But his lack of success on the official ladder was more than compensated by the appreciation he received from friends and peers for his literary and scholarly abilities. It was his distinction to contribute importantly to the revival of Ching-shih (Practical Affairs) studies in the nineteenth century. For example, soon after 1822, he was given the task of editing government documents on political and economic affairs, the Huang-ch’ao ching-shih wen-pien, a task he completed in 1826. In 1842, he finished writing a history of Ch’ing military operations up to the Tao-kuang era, which was published under the title Sheng-wu chi. He next undertook a major revision of the history of the Yüan dynasty, the Yüan-shih hsin-pien, which was completed in 1853 though not published until 1905. After the defeat of China by the British in the Opium War, Wei began compiling a geography of foreign nations, by consulting translations from Western periodicals, which was published under the title of Hai-kuo t’u-chih, (An Illustrated Gazetteer of Countries beyond the Sea) first in fifty chüan in 1844, and later twice augmented (1847 and 1852) to sixty and then one hundred chüan. Portions of the Hai-huo t’u-chih and the Sheng-wu chi were translated into English and Japanese during his lifetime. In between these larger undertakings, Wei had time to write more than a dozen exegetical treatises on the Lao Tzu, on various Buddhist sutras, and on the Confucian classics, which he began to study under the leading “Modern Text” scholar Liu Feng-lü (1776–1829) when he was a student in Peking in his early twenties. His collected poems, in ten chüan, were published in 1870 under the title Ku-wei-t’ang shih chi (Poems from the Hall of Ancient Antiquities).

(Irving Lo)

____________________

1. Lien-che Tu, ECCP, 2:850–852.

Song of Chiang-nan:¹ Two Selections

“Plant the flower farms,

Plant the flower farms!”

At Tiger Hill, for ten leagues around, all along the canal-

Roses bloom in the spring breeze, azaleas in the summer,

Jasmines in the hottest summer days, and lotus in early autumn;

Showers of crimson in the forest perfume the entire river.

“Picked in the morning, blooms by night;

Picked at night, blooms in the morning.”

Flower gatherers come at the crack of dawn,

Flower peddlers’ boats return by night.

“When you have your own fields, why not grow rice and grain?”

“The autumn harvest can’t meet the double-tax payments.²

Foreign silver soars in price, and official measures grow larger.³

After meeting the official quota, what’s left but dried stalks?

Rice fields have become so cheap no one wants them;

Turned into flower farms, they give me double profit.

The lower fields are too damp, unfit for flowers;

Some folk run away from debt, leaving water lily sprouts.”

Alas! extravagance abounds in the city, more than in ancient Wei and Cheng;⁴

People outside the city toil harder than the ancients of T’ang and Wei.

Travelers know only to praise the elegance of Soochow folks;

Flower growers alone remain to weep for growers of rice.

Ah-fu-jung, ah-fu-jung!⁵

A product of the West,

Shipped to the eastern lands—

I know not how many countries had smelled it in the wind

Before it came to titillate our men and women like strong liquor.

At night, they see no moon or stars;

Nor the bright sun at day—

They make for themselves a perpetual night, a Never-Never Land:⁶

A kingdom of enduring darkness,

A lake forever without grief,⁷

In a den of pleasure purchased with gold, the Universe is forgotten:

Where the Six Directions are merged,⁸

Where the Nine Districts become one;⁹

The nobility behind crimson gates,

The humble in their hovels—

They dull their senses to addiction, what’s to be said?

But whose fault that the national wealth is squandered, defenses collapse?

Let me say to you: don’t put all the blame on the ah-fu-jung!

Palpable, or vanishing in smoke— addiction¹⁰ leads to the same result.

Border officials have their addiction: it’s called “trafficking in poison”;

High ministers have their addiction: it’s called the “Golden Mean.”¹¹

Scholar-officials are parrots who speak clever words by rote;

Finance ministers, like Yang the Tiger,¹² steal treasures from the state.

If only the court could cure the addiction of the great officials,

The smoking of opium would be instantly eradicated.

(Nos. 1 and 8 from a series of 10; WYC, 2:670–673)

(Tr. Irving Lo)

On the Chia-ling River¹³

Evenings, I lodge with the evening mist,

At dawn, I sail with the dawn wind.

The sounds of the scull shatter my dream,

While boatmen talk beneath a waning moon.

Perching fowls fly up from shallow banks;

Last night’s fog merges with the hill in front.

Thus a reed mat’s width of water is made

To look as distant and faraway as Lake P’eng-li.

Abruptly turned about by the current in midstream,

I find myself cut off from a solitary island.

Dimly I begin to discern trees on the bank,

And then the sun emerges clearly on the river.

Longing to return home, yet I forget all thoughts of return:

The dawn clouds above the river distress a traveler’s heart.

(No. 3 from a series of 3; WYC, 2:626)

(Tr. Irving Lo)

Remembering the Past at Chin-ling¹⁴

Naught remains of the dying glow, past and present, on the waters of Ch’in-huai;

Many a hero ground to dust by Tsin’s Stone Head Citadel.

Terrestrial spirits depart time and again with the vanishing of the royal aura;

The departed ones bequeath to future generations only grief.

Wu and Yüeh of the “Spring and Autumn” era: ramparts viewed in lamplight;

Kiosks and pavilions of Ch’i and Liang: children’s songs heard in a mist.

Most melancholy and full of feeling is the moon in the sky:

Year after year, it lingers lovingly over Yeh city in autumn.¹⁵

(No. 2 from a series of 8; WYC; 2:803)

(Tr. Irving Lo)

Sitting in Meditation at Night, Facing Hui-shan¹⁶

Everyone says the autumn moon is lovely—

Lovelier still when its light falls on a mountain stream.

Shadows of trees sink into the shadows of the cliffs;

Sounds of the stream are lost in the sounds of rain.

Only by degrees I sense the sky to be dawning;

I hardly notice the water’s widening gleam.

Should visitors fail to disperse and leave,

Who’s there to know the mountain air is pure?

(No. 3 from a series of 3; WYC; 2:777)

(Tr. Irving Lo)

NOTES

1. This series of ten poems entitled “Chiang-nan yin” was also given a subtitle by the poet: “Hsin Yüeh-fu [New Music Bureau Songs], in Imitation of Po Hsiang-shan’s [Po Chü-yi’s] Style.” By definition, a hsin yüeh-fu poem must deal with contemporary events, and the style involves the use of irregular meter and dialogue. Tiger Hill, or Hu-ch’iu (line 3), is a famous scenic spot seven li northwest of Soochow.

2. Starting in 1723, at the beginning of the Yung-cheng reign, Chinese farmers were taxed twice a year, in the spring and fall.

3. Between 1830 and 1838, because of the heavy flow of silver abroad to pay for the importation of opium, silver gained 60 percent in value against the native currency. “Official measures” refers to the standard used to measure grain when collected as tax by the government. During the same period, one hu, equivalent to ten pecks or piculs in former times, was decreed to be equal only to five pecks or piculs.

4. Cheng and Wei were two states in ancient China censured by Confucius for their alleged taste for lascivious music. T’ang and Wei, two states in Shensi province, were noted for their hardworking and frugal people.

5. Ah-fu-jung is the Chinese name for opium, so called because the flower of the opium poppy was said to resemble the hibiscus or fu-jung.

6. Hsiao-yao kuo; literally, “pleasure roaming” country, was probably coined from the Taoist phraseology hsiao-yao yu, or “free and easy wandering.”

7. See Wang Shih-chen, note 17.

8. The traditional Chinese three-dimensional concept of spatial direction: East, West, North, South, up, and down.

9. The ancient division of China into Nine Districts.

10. A note supplied by the poet to this word reads: “The word addiction or yin [Morohashi, 7:22631] in the vulgate speech, referring to opium addiction, is not found in the dictionary. Hence, I borrow another word from the Shuowen, the word that means ‘carbuncle or swelling’” (Morohashi, 9:29300; cf. Shuo-wen chieh-tzu, 5b: 10a). Since this word may also be pronounced yin, it is possible to imagine that the poet intends a pun with the four words preceding it in this line, which read yu-hsing (literally, “having form,” probably meaning “palpable to the touch”) and wu-hsing (literally, “formless,” i.e., “existing without shape or form”).

11. The term used by the poet here is chung-yung, also the title of one of the “Four Books” in the Confucian canon. Literally meaning “showing no partiality or bias,” this concept had by the mid-nineteenth century been reduced to such trite expression that the poet considered it as the root cause of all of China’s troubles.

12. The name used by the poet here is Yang-hu, alluding to the corrupt official of Lu, also called Yang Huo, mentioned in Lun-Yü, as a dishonest officer who served the Chi family. He once stole the precious jade-studded bow, a treasure of the state of Lu.

13. A river in Szechwan that flows into the Yangtze, near Pa Hsien.

14. The modern-day city of Nanking is also known as the Stone Head Citadel. The Ch’in-huai River once flowed through the capital’s most prosperous district. See Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, note 4.

15. The city derives its name from a hill west of Chiang-ning county in Kiangsu, originally the smelting center of the Kingdom of Wu. Later a Taoist temple was built there, and visited often by men of lofty mind and principle, such as the famous calligrapher Wang Hsi-chih (320–379) and Hsieh An, who were said to have climbed the hill together.

16. A famous mountain near Wusih, Kiangsu province.

Waiting for the Unicorn