Sh i P oe t ry : anC i e n t anD r e C e n t s t y l e s 319countrymen were left to face the invaders and their new life under Jurchen rule.
(The population of the Song state in 1100 is estimated to have been 100 million,
larger than that of all of Europe.) These people were referred to as yimin (people
who lived under a former dynasty), the term used in line 3 of Lu You’s poem and, in
Chinese historical writing, one designating people whose lives outlast the dynasty
they were born under, especially if they remain loyal to the defunct power. Yimin
are always viewed as unfortunate; those who happen to find themselves ruled by a
foreign conqueror are considered particularly ill-fated.
Lu You’s own politics were distinctly irredentist. He was a lifelong advocate of
the reconquest of the north. Two common themes in his enormous collection of
poetry (running to some 10,000 pieces) are criticism of the so-called peace policy
that prevailed at the Southern Song court and expressions of sympathy for his
countrymen of the north. Lu You even went so far as to align himself with the
generally disliked grand councillor Han Tuozhou (1151–1207), who sponsored an
unsuccessful military campaign against the Jurchens in 1206.
The quatrain “As Dawn Approached on an Autumn Night, No. 2,” was written in
1192, when Lu You was living in retirement in northern Zhejiang but still, clearly,
thinking of national politics. The opening words of the title seem to imply that the
poet has been awake all night, brooding perhaps on his nation’s plight. The cold
air that greets him as he steps outside seems to have a dual effect: it reminds him
on that autumn morning that the year is moving toward its end (anticipating the
thought in line 4), and it probably serves to set him thinking about his country-
man in the north, where the weather is colder still.
The opening two parallel lines present images of the two most noteworthy fea-
tures of the northern landscape: the Yellow River and Hua Mountain. The latter is
the westernmost and culturally most important of China’s five sacred mountains
(wuyue).7 Overlooking the Yellow River, Hua Mountain is located between the an-
cient capitals of Luoyang and Chang’an. Owing to the proximity of Hua Mountain
to the ancient centers of Chinese civilization, since the earliest times “Hua” has
been synonymous with “China” and the “Chinese people,” and even today the syl-
lable is present in the official designation of the country. The irony of the opening
lines is that these grand and timeless symbols of the nation, the Yellow River and
Hua Mountain, are no longer under Chinese control. The poet can only imagine
them; he cannot actually gaze on them. By specifying the length of the river in
line 1, the poet indirectly reminds us of the expanse of the Chinese territory now
under Jurchen rule. (Although the line actually says “thirty thousand miles,” I have
changed it to “ten thousand” in the translation—still hyperbolic but more accu-
rate, given that the Chinese mile was equivalent to roughly one-third the English
mile.)
Line 3 identifies the problem that the former people of the Song dynasty now
find themselves in, standing “amid barbarian dust,” even though they live along
the banks of the Yellow River and in the shadow of Hua Mountain. No tears left, all
they can do is look southward for the Chinese army that never comes to liberate
them and regain what to Lu You was territory that never should have been formally