Sitting Alone on Ching-Ting Mountain

獨坐敬亭山 (李白)
眾鳥高飛盡
孤雲獨去閒
相看兩不厭
只有敬亭山

Alone - Sit - Respect - Pavilion - Mountain (Li Bai)
Multitude - Bird - High - Fly - Finished
Solitary - Cloud - Alone - Depart - Idle
Each Other - Look - Two - Not - Tire of
Only - To  Be - Respect - Pavilion - Mountain

Sitting Alone on Ching-Ting Mountain (Li Bai)
A flock of birds has soared away
A solitary cloud has idly drifted on
We never tire of looking at each other
Only Ching-Ting Mountain


敬亭山: Some place names may not appear in some dictionaries so you'd just have to know. It is sort of like knowing that Menlo Park is a city.

眾鳥: This is literally a multitude of birds, which in English is a flock of birds.

高飛: to soar

盡: This character made me choose the present perfect tense for both the second and third lines. It indicates the action has already occurred.

去: Although this means, "to go", clouds drift.

相看兩不厭: Since the title establishes that he is alone on the mountain, this can be interpreted as he and the mountain never tire of looking at each other.

Roads of Luoyang

洛陽道 (儲光羲)
大道直如髮
春日佳氣多
五陵貴公子
雙雙鳴玉珂

Luo - Sun - Road (Chu Guang Xi)
Big - Road - Straight - As - Hair
Spring - Day - Excellent - Weather - Many
Five - Mound - Noble - Public - Son
Pair - Pair - To Ring - Jade - Ornament on a Bridle

Roads of Luoyang (Chu Guang Xi)
Main roads as straight as hair
Many spring days with excellent weather
Noble sons of officials of Wuling Hills
Riding side-by-side the jade ornaments on their bridles ringing

About plurality: Chinese words don't generally have a distinct plural form. Sometimes you just have to infer the plurality from the context.

五陵: Wuling Hills. If you are not lucky enough to find the dictionary entry for the names of places, then you just have to rely on someone telling you.

雙雙: This means, "in pairs". Since this poem is about the young lords on the main roads of a city and because of the reference to the jade ornaments of bridles, it would make sense that they are riding horseback side-by-side or in pairs.

Seeing Off Granary Director Guo

送郭司倉 (王昌齒)
映門淮水綠
留騎主人心
明月隨良掾
春潮夜夜深

See Off - Outer City Wall - Company - Granary (Wang Chang Chi)
Reflect - Door - Huai River - Water - Green
Remain - Ride - Host - Person - Heart
Bright - Moon - Follow - Good - Official
Spring - Tide - Night - Night - Deep

Seeing Off Granary Director Guo (Wang Chang Chi)
The green water of the Huai River reflects on my door
The departing guest remains in the host's heart
The bright moon follows a good official
The spring tide gets deeper every night

郭: surname Guo

司倉: This is the person's title. Red Pine uses "granary director" as the title.

主人: host, owner

淮: Huai River

留騎主人心: I am not sure how to address the 騎 character in this line.

I Call On Censor Yuan But We Do Not Meet

訪袁拾遺不遇 (孟浩然)
洛陽訪才子
江嶺作流人
聞說梅花早
何如此地春

Call On - Yuan - Pick Up - To Lose - Not - Meet (Meng Hao Ran)
Luo - Sun - Call On - Just - Suffix
River - Mountain Range - To Do - Flow - Person
Listen - Speak - Plum - Flower - Early
How - As If - This - Ground - Spring

I Call On Censor Yuan But We Do Not Meet (Meng Hao Ran)
In Luoyang I call on a gifted scholar
To Jianling he has been exiled
I've heard it said the plum blossoms flower early [in Jiangling]
But it can't compare to this place [Louyang] in spring


袁: surname Yuan

拾遺: This means to appropriate someone else's property, but in this case because it is right after the person's name, it more likely is a reference to his title. Red Pine uses "censor" as the title.

流人: someone in exile

何如: This is used to compare what comes after the phrase to what is in front. The thing that comes after is usually "better" than the thing in front.

Spring Dawn

春曉 (孟浩然)
春眠不覺曉
處處聞啼鳥
夜來風雨聲
花落知多少

Spring Dawn (Meng Hao Ran)
Sleeping in spring I'm not aware of the dawn
Everywhere I hear the crowing of birds
In the night the sound of wind and rain
Flowers have fallen I wonder how many

Not much to say. This is an easy one.

Quiet Evening Thoughts and Traveler's Poem

My 3 year-old daughter has started taking Chinese classes on the weekends. To fend off the inevitable question, "Why do I have to learn it if you don't know it?", I'm making a concerted effort to learn Chinese. I can speak it at a somewhat limited conversational level, understand enough to watch Chinese movies without the subtitles, and can recognize the odd character here and there, but I am in no means fluent. After spending a little under two months memorizing about 38 nursery rhymes, I could read and write about 450 characters, but this is only about 1/5 of the way to being considered literate.

I tried using a textbook that teaches a seemingly random collection of  words and sentences in each chapter, but found that I simply can't remember the characters in this manner. Even short children stories were not conducive to my goal of learning the characters well enough to be able to read and write them. There is something about the short and rhythmic pattern of rhymes that allows me to better remember the characters and words.

Instead of memorizing more nursery rhymes, I decided to pick up "Poems of the Masters", translated by Red Pine. These 224 poems from the Tang and Sung Dynasty were taught from grade school onwards as a means to learning the characters and the rhythm of the language. My father had to memorize these when he was going through school. Although each poem is accompanied by a translation, I find that I'm not always completely satisfied with Red Pine's translations.

I never really understood poetry even in English so I'm only offering my attempts at translating the words in my attempt to learn Chinese. There will be no clever insights into any subtext, or at least not many. And I will not be attempting to make English rhymes. I mainly use apps on my iPod Touch for looking up words (Pleco, DianHua, KTdict C-E, and ChineseIdiom) and also purpleculture.net when I'm on my desktop. When I can't locate the word or phrase or make sense of the dictionary entries, I ask my father and friends. I also go to them to confirm my understanding of the words. I also use http://lingua.mtsu.edu/chinese-computing/vp/index.php to keep a running tally of how many characters I can recognize.

I'll be going through the book in order, except for these first two because they popped up in my daughter's class amongst such rhymes as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Two Tigers".

With my lengthy introduction out of the way, here is the first classic poem that I learned through my daughter's Chinese classes.

靜夜思 (李白)
床前明月光
疑是地上霜
舉頭望明月
低頭思故鄉

Quiet Evening Thoughts (Li Bai)
At the front of my bed the moon light is bright
I suspect on the ground there is frost
I raise my head and look at the bright moon
I lower my head and think of home

思故鄉: This could also be interpreted as the person being homesick.

I'm not sure if this next poem is in Red Pine's book. I had trouble translating this because the previous rhyme from my daughter's school was "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands" so I was not in the right mindset. Also, I was being much too literal in translating and not looking for the meaning behind the words.

遊子吟 (孟郊)
慈母手中線
遊子身上衣
臨行密密縫
意恐遲遲歸
誰言寸草心
報得三春暉

Traveler's Poem (Meng Jiao)
The thread in the caring mother's hand
Becomes the clothes on the traveler's body
Upon his leaving she sews the thread closely
She fears that he will return late
Who says that a humble heart
Can payback a mother's love

寸草春暉: This is a Chinese idiom that translates to "one-inch grass spring sunshine". It means, "Children owe to parents what young grass owes to the spring sunshine" or "Parents give to their children far beyond what the children can or is expected to repay".

寸草心: A one-inch grass heart is a small or humble heart.

得: This is a particle linking a verb to the following phrase indicating effect (I'm not sure how to explain this better. I grew up speaking the language :-p ).