94 t He Han Dy na s t y
The poem begins with a forthright exclamation of the persona’s love. Even in
fifth-century China, few literati would have openly written about their wives or
families, still fewer about their own love affairs. Judging from this tradition, it
would be hard to imagine any literati of status having written a poem like this.
Here, again, it perhaps represents both an original folk song and literati revisions.
Not until line 3, which contains the word jun, denoting a male in classical Chi-
nese, does the reader realize that the poem’s persona is a woman. The woman is
in love with a man who is far away in the south. When she hears that he has jilted
her for someone else, she is furious and decides to burn and destroy his gift to
her. The fiery character depicted in this poem is rather different from the typical
female image in Chinese literature. Indeed, women in the Han perhaps enjoyed
more freedom than those in the Song (960–1279) dynasty, especially in marriage.
Divorce was not stigmatized, and remarriage was normal during this era. For ex-
ample, the wife of Chen Ping (d. 178 b.C.e.), the strategy adviser to the first em-
peror of the Han, had married five times before marrying Chen—all her previous
husbands had died. Overall, the female persona in the poem is a strong, energetic
character who will allow no compromise in her love affair.
Line 3 has been traditionally translated as “What shall I send you?”25 Accord-
ingly, it is understood to reveal how the woman is thinking of sending a gift to her
lover in the south. But the expression he yong in Han-time usage usually repre-
sents a rhetorical “why should” or, more plainly, “do not have to.” The hairpin with
pearls seems to be more appropriately understood as a gift from the man. It makes
sense that, after the breakup, the woman would wish to burn the love token. The
act of destroying the gift not only demonstrates how decisive she is, but also sug-
gests how deeply she has loved the man to have such a violent response. Line 13
is an allusion to poem no. 23 in the Book of Poetry, in which a young woman begs
her love to keep quiet during their tryst so that the dogs will not bark. The expres-
sion “Cocks crow, dogs bark” sounds especially rustic and perhaps too vulgar and
plain for a man of letters. The word ji (cock) first appears in a poetic context in the
Book of Poetry, but this is the first poem in which gou (dog) is used. The Book of
Poetry contains the word quan for “dog”; gou does not seem to have been a com-
mon word until the Han. Except for this yuefu poem, “dog” appears at the earliest
in another Han poem, “Jiming” (Cocks Crow), and later in the work of the famous
fourth-century poet Tao Qian (Tao Yuanming, 365?–427), whose poetry was not
appreciated by his contemporaries because of his unpolished style. In the closure
of the poem, the woman discloses her fear that her brother and sister-in-law will
learn about her affair. Anne M. Birrell has speculated concerning the woman’s fear
that she “believed that the attentions of [the] young official were serious” and, now
pregnant, fears that the news will soon come out.26 I doubt that we can determine
the identity and status of the woman’s lover, as Birrell proposes. Birrell’s idea that
the sparrow hawk is “a metaphor for the swift passage of time” is also baseless. The
autumn season at the end of the poem, however, does seem to symbolize a dire
future for the young woman, since her unsuccessful affair will become known to