“Waiting for the Unicorn” | Open Indiana

(15 NOVEMBER 1877–15 JULY 1907)¹

Ch’iu Chin (Hsüan-ch’ing, Ching-hsiung; CHIEN-HU NÜ-HSIA), a native of Shao-hsing, Chekiang province, is widely known as a martyr of the anti-Manchu revolution, as well as a poet, writer, educator, orator, and feminist. She led a short but extraordinary life. The beloved daughter of a gentry family, she was taught to read and write as a child. As an adult, she took up fencing, riding, and drinking, thus revealing a flair for the romantic and sensational. An unconventional and strong-willed woman, shortly after the Boxer Rebellion she left her husband and children to study in Japan. There she became involved in revolutionary émigré politics. After returning to China in 1906, she taught school, published a woman’s magazine, and assumed a leading role in the Restoration Society in her native province. While engaged in planning a local uprising, she and some fellow conspirators were arrested. While in prison she wrote the well-known single line poem: Ch’iu-feng ch’iu-yü ch’ou-sha jen (Amidst autumn winds and autumn rains, I am moved to profound sorrow), and shortly thereafter she was executed by decapitation.

Ch’iu Chin was a prolific and versatile writer. As a poet, she employed a wide range of metrical forms: the shih, the tz’u, various popular song patterns, and the t’an-tz’u. The freedom of form she demanded as a poet was accompanied by the choice of a strongly personal style. Her verse is expressed in a simple, vigorous, direct language, and it eschews the heavy weight of historical and literary allusions so common to traditionalist poetics. Feminism, heroism, and revolution are themes commonly encountered in her poetry, and the strong note of patriotism she sounds in many poems reveals a deep personal sense of mission and a determination to sacrifice herself to the revolutionary cause.

(Pao Chia-lin)

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1.Chao-ying Fang, ECCP, 1:169–171.

Random Feelings:
Written in Japan

The sun and moon lusterless, heaven and earth grow dark;

Submerged womankind—who will rescue them?

Barrette and bracelet pawned to travel across the sea,

Parting from kith and kin, I left my homeland.

Freeing my bound feet, I washed away the poison of a thousand years,

And, with agitated heart, awakened the souls of all the flowers.

Alas, I have only a binding cloth woven of mermaid’s silk,

Half stained with blood, half with tears.

(CCC, p. 85)

(Tr. Pao Chia-lin)

Written on Board a Ship on the Yellow Sea, When a Japanese
Friend Asked Me for a Poem, and When I Saw a Map of the
Russo-Japanese War

Driven by a myriad-mile wind, I come and go;

Alone crossing the Eastern Sea, I bring with me the spring thunder.

How can I bear looking at a map with its colors altered?¹

And consign rivers and hills to the fires of Kalpa?

Unstrained wine never quenches the tears of a patriot;

A country’s salvation relies on exceptional genius.

I pledge the spilled blood from a hundred thousand skulls

To restore the universe with all our strength.

(CCC, p. 77)

(Tr. Pao Chia-lin)

A Song: Promoting Women’s Rights

Our generation yearns to be free;

To all who struggle: one more cup of the Wine of Freedom!

Male and female equality was by Heaven endowed,

So why should women lag behind?

Let’s struggle to pull ourselves up,

To wash away the filth and shame of former days.

United we can work together,

And restore this land with our soft white hands.

Most humiliating is the old custom,

Of treating women no better than cows and horses.

When the light of dawn shines on our civilization,

We must rise to head the list.

Let’s tear out the roots of servitude,

Gain knowledge, learning, and practice what we know;

Take responsibility on our shoulders,

Never to fail or disappoint, our citizen heroines!

(CCC, p. 113)

(Tr. Pao Chia-lin)

A Song of the Precious Knife

The palaces of the House of Han lie in the setting sun;

Dead is this ancient country of five millenia.

Sunk deep in sleep these several hundred years,

No one recognizes the shame of being enslaved.

Remember our ancient ancestor Hsien-yüan² by name,

Who, born and raised in the K’un-lun Mountains,³

Expanded our domain to the Yellow and Yangtze rivers,

With great knives flashing conquered the Central Plain.

Then, a painful cry from Plum Mountain,⁴ what could be done?

The imperial city filled with brambles, the bronze camels buried.

How often I’ve looked back on the capital’s former glories;

The dirges of a fallen land bring copious tears.

Northward marched an allied army, eight nations strong,

And once more our territory was given away.

From the west came white devils to sound the warning bell,

To startle the Han Chinese from their slavish dreams.

My host bequeathed me this golden knife,

And now, possessing it, my heart is brave.

An “ism” of iron and blood is destined for our day;

One hundred million skulls we count as a mere feather.

Bathed by sun and moon, this radiant treasure,

Fit to be cherished by any death-defying man of stature.

I pledge to seek the road of life in the jaws of death,

For the peace of the world depends on force of arms.

Have you not seen Ching K’o⁵ as a guest of Ch’in

Bare the foot-long dagger hidden in the map?

A single thrust at court, though it missed the mark,

Was so startling that it seized a tyrant’s soul.

With my bare hands, I wish to save my fatherland,

Though this land of Emperor Yü⁶ overflows with a degenerate breed.

When everyone’s heart is dead, what can be done?

Seizing a pen, I write this “Song of the Precious Knife.”

This “Song of the Precious Knife” strengthens one’s resolve,

Awakens many a soul in this land of the dead.

With precious knife and valiant arm, what can compare?

Forget old friends and foes in this mortal realm!

Don’t despise this foot of steel as of little worth;

The salvation of the nation depends on the miracle it will work!

Henceforth, I will take Heaven and Earth as my furnace,

The yin and yang as my fuel,

Gather iron ore from the six continents,

And cast thousands upon thousands of precious knives to cleanse this sacred land,

To renew the august name and power of our ancestor, the Yellow Emperor,

And scour clean from our national history, millennium upon millennium, this awful shame!

(CCC, p. 80)

(Tr. Pao Chia-lin)

Tune: Man chiang hung (Full River Red)

In the capital for a short stay,

And again it is the splendid Mid-Autumn Festival.

Along the fence, chrysanthemums are everywhere in bloom;

The face of autumn shines as if wiped clean.

All around us our enemies sing of our defeat;

For eight years I have missed the flavor of my native land.

How I resent being taken for a reluctant female;

I hardly deserve that fame!

My sex disqualifies me

For the role of male,

But my heart

Is more heroic than a man’s.

I guess I’m headstrong, full of daring,

One who warms up when people are around.

Among those of common mind, who can know me?

A heroine at road’s end is bound to meet frustration.

In this vulgar world of red dust, where can I find someone

Who truly appreciates me?

Tears wet my dress.

(CCC, p. 97)

(Tr. Pao Chia-lin)

NOTES

1. The ceding of territory is usually indicated on a Chinese map; the alteration of color results from redefining a nation’s territorial limits.

2. The Yellow Emperor, the legendary founder of Chinese civilization.

3. The tallest mountain range known in ancient China, located west of Hsi-ning, Kansu province.

4. Plum Mountain is homophonous with Coal Hill, the place where the last emperor of Ming committed suicide.

5. See Ts’ao Chen-chi, notes 6–13.

6. The legendary sage-king who tamed the floods and founded the Hsia dynasty.

Waiting for the Unicorn