7/23/2019 The English translation of the poem the "Snow" by Mao Ze-dong

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The Snow

- A poem of the Chinese classic style verse called as Xin Yuan Cun (The Spring

Comes to a Delightful Garden) written by Mao Zedong in February of 1936. Butit was not published until Mao went to Chongqingin 1945 to hold peace talks

withJiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek). Mao and Jiang had been deadly enemies intheir whole lives. One may guess that Mao was flattering Jiang or expressing

his own ambition through that poem for that special occasion.

- Translated in English by Johnson K. Gao in 2008 at 71 years of age in DallasTexas, USA. As one can calculate out that the translator had not been born when

that poem was written. He was still a fetus in his mother uterus at that time. Gao

had composed a song for the poem of Snow, which was selected in a CD calledas For Love, For Snow and For Echo (http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnsongao2) and

music sheet in Gaos Music for Olympic Games

(http://www.lulu.com/content/2102738).

Tis the wind and the light (1) of the northern landscape that caught my feeling:

The field is frozen in the ice extending several hundred of miles (2),

And above three thousand of miles (2) the dazzling snow is flying.

Staring at both inside and outside along the Long-long Castle*,

It remains to me nothing but a vast in vastness.

Starting from its original source until its final end,

Immediately, the giant river (3) lost its turbulent waves.

Mountains are as like as silvering snakes in dancing.

The platform presents herds of waxy elephant running over the plain.

As though they would like to compete with the heavenly God to see who is higher.

When one glances at it on a fine day,It turns into a fair lady, whod make-up with rouge and garmented in white,

That is extremely elegant and charming.

The territory is so gorgeous and enchantment.

That had lured countless heroes to rush in, bend and bow.

What a pity, the emperor Qinhuang and the emperor Hanwu(4) were lack of literacy.

The emperor Tangzong and the emperor Songzu (5) knew little about Feng-Sao (6).

As for Genghis Khan, who had been qualified as The Proud Son of the Heaven.

He knew only how to stretch the bow to shoot huge eagles.

Ah! All of them had passed over now.

If one wish to count among those wind-flowing men

(7)

,It had better to find them rather in this current generation (8).

(1) Chinese people always use the wind and light to represent the word scene in

English. The Chinese poem could be the most concise one, among poems with differentlanguages, in using words and in selecting sounds so carefully, and it compresses the

meaning to be so concentrated. The first line of Maos poem has only four Chinese

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Jieshihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Jieshi

7/23/2019 The English translation of the poem the "Snow" by Mao Ze-dong

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characters: Bei Guo Feng Guang. Those words mean Northern, country (nation), wind,

and light. The Chinese word Guo means nation or country, but, I translated it simply to

landscape. There is no need to use a subjective word in a sentence as in English that ithas to have. In majority of case, verses of English translation can not be read as beautiful

as the original Chinese verses. That is one reason why one must study Chinese to feel

Chinese poems beautiful sounds and rhythms.(2) The Chinese unit of length Li equals to kilometer. Of course one Li is shorter

than a mile. However, when the poet used one thousand of Li (or Lies if you think it

proper) and ten thousand of Li in the poem, he was only to describe a very long distancebut not the exact length of unit. The translator used mile for the Li here. But, after a

consideration, the translator felt that to use ten thousand of miles to translate ten thousand

of Li will cause a problem, since the Earth is only 40,000 kilometers in its equator, ten

thousand of miles will be extra too long for the northern part of the Earth. So, He usedthree thousand of miles for authors ten thousand Li and several hundred miles for the

thousand of Li.

(3) The giant river in the original Chinese words are Da (big) He (river). That was to

denote the Yellow River (because of its muddy color water thus so named) by the poet.(4) Qinhuang = Qing (dynastys) Shi Huang Di. Here Shi = beginning, Huang = King of

kings, and Di = emperor. Hanwu = Han (dynastys) Wu (military) Di (emperor).(5) Tangzong = Tang (dynastys) Tai (great-grand father) Zong (clan). Songzu = Song

(dynastys) Tai (great-grandfather) Zu (ancestor).

(6) Feng = Guo Feng (an album of poems corrected by Confucius from different

countries or states in the northern China). Sao = Lisao, which was a famous poem writtenby the greatest poet in the Chinese history Qu Yuan in State Chu (now the Hunan and

Hubei areas). In Maos poem he used the short form Feng-Sao two Chinese characters to

represent poetry as a whole.(7) Wind-flowing men are the straight translation from the Chinese characters Feng =

wind, Liu = flowing, Ren = men, Wu = things. Putting those four characters together, it

produces a special meaning to describe those heroic persons with all of the followingcharacters: handsome, clever, smart, talented, full of wisdom, capable of doing things,

admirable, outstanding, romantic, having leadership that cause other people to pay

respect to them and to obedient to them willingly. No any English word can be translatedwithout losing its entire meaning. So, I keep the original words and created the new

English word wind-flowing man.

(8) The current generation was translated from two Chinese characters: Jin = today,

Zhao = morning or a dynasty.

* I dont know whom that he or she was the first person to translate the Chinese words

Chang Cheng in to English as the Great Wall. Although it is now acceptedunanimously, the original meaning of Chang Cheng is a Long Castle or Elongated

castles. Here, the translator used the word Long-long Castle to describe its extreme

length of that castle.