Poetry as metaphor has been my passion and past-time, especially in trying to translate Chinese poems into English. The sentiments of Tang poetry and Song lyrics typically present a sad and stoic sentiment of homesickness, of separated relationships, and of reflections of nature. I hope readers who don’t know the Chinese language can still appreciate this presentation using my translation. 

The Story of Minglan is a recent Chinese television drama adapted from a web story 知否, 知否? 应是绿肥红瘦. Its Chinese title comes from one of the most famous Song (dynasty, also known as Sung in Wade-Giles romanization) Lyrics written by Li Qing Zhao (1084-1151): 

My translation: 

Unlike Tang poetry that has identical line-lengths within each poem, Song lyrics has patterns of changing line-lengths. Each set of pattern is called by a name. The one above is a Ru Meng Ling. In addition to rhymes, rhythm, and preset tones for each sequence of words, the entire lyric is set to music. This YouTube presentation discusses Li Qing Zhao and Song Lyrics. In the male-dominated, class-oriented Confucian society of the Song Dynasty, Li lived and suffered for living a “masculine lifestyle” while writing the most beautiful feminine style and topics of Song Lyrics.

This lyric presents a fresh and unusual usage of colours, first as a metaphor of plants, but ultimately of people. The beginning of the lyric seems like an ordinary morning hangover moment after a drunken night. There is then a nuanced reference of someone, perhaps even Li herself, faded in youth and beauty, suffering the ravages of time and alcohol, as a flower inevitably wilted from the storms of life. How can one translate all this ambiguity and forlorn sadness in so few words?

What question Li poses to the maid in the third line is hidden and unsaid. In light of the overnight storm and the maid's answer in line four, one can imagine it is what the maid sees. The key word in line four is the conjunction “but” (卻), due to the maid's unexpected answer that the flowers have survived. Li’s closing comment that leaves always outlive flowers presumes the maid has not observed carefully the flowers' demise. Li then rebuffs the careless assumptions of the maid. Whether as a reference to herself or to women of her times in general, Li is asserting that the lives of flowery women after a storm invariably endure loss while the privileged leafy men thrive. This last line becomes a personal lament, an aphorism, and a condemnation of the injustice of society, sentiments true even now in our own times.