During the Fairbank Center’s February 12th Chinese New Year celebration, Yuan Zhang, Visiting Scholar at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies—who will be returning to Beijing this month—presented her poem, “Partridge Sky” (written under her literary name, Yunuo Zhang) as a parting gift. Zhang read the poem aloud to the audience alongside Fairbank Center Director Mark Wu.
Zhang says she was inspired to write this Song Dynasty-style poem in April 2019, while she was working in the Peking University Library. “Amidst a light rain, I admired the peonies in the nearby Jinyuan Garden 静园, which led to the creation of exquisite verses,” she remembers. “This poem weaves together descriptions of scenery, expressions of intent, and philosophical revelations, all under the theme of surpassing the peonies, gradually reaching a state of natural perfection, echoing the wisdom of ancient philosophers and poets such as Laozi, Yan Jidao, Su Shi, and Wang Wei across millennia.”
鷓鴣天
Partridge Sky
張雨諾
by ZHANG Yunuo
雨濕春衫舊香酣，
Rain drenches the spring robe, its old fragrance deep,
歲歲燕啼人影珊。
Year after year, swallows cry, thy shadow softly creeps.
清風送語無聲問，
A gentle breeze carries wordless queries in its sweep,
明月照渠有磯泉。
Bright moon illuminates the stream, over pebbles it leaps.
詩已冷，
Poetry now grows cold,
劍未眠，
The sword yet to sleep,
萬里潮歸紫氣暄。
Across thousands of miles, tides return, amidst the purple Qi enveloping.
玄玄天下恆守靜，
The profound mysterious of heaven and earth, always returning to stillness and the void,
眾妙生辰勝牡丹。
The ineffable of wonders is born, surpassing even peonies in heaps.
