❀ ❀ ❀a n o t e o n h o w t o u s e t h i s a n t h o l o g y
The goal of this anthology is to help students overcome language barriers and en-
gage with Chinese poetical texts in ways that yield as much aesthetic pleasure and
intellectual insight as one gets from the originals.
This anthology features 143 famous poems composed over a period of almost
three millennia stretching from the early Zhou all the way to the Qing, the last
of China’s dynasties, which ended in 1911. These poems are all called “classical
poems,” and classical they truly are—in terms of both their pastness and their
revered quality. Yet many of them, especially those written by Tang and Song mas-
ters, are amazingly modern or contemporary in the sense that they are being fondly
read and recited by millions of Chinese people. In fact, when educated Chinese are
called on to recite some poems, what they recite are most likely classical poems
rather than those written by modern or contemporary poets. Moreover, many of
them continue to write poems in classical forms. So, unlike classical Western
poetry, classical Chinese poetry may be regarded as a living tradition, enhanced by
the audio-video gadgets of the information age.
A student of Chinese language and culture can and should be an active partici-
pant in this great tradition. To aid in the learning process, we introduce here a new
approach to the presentation and the interpretation of Chinese poetical texts.
The learning of Chinese poetry should, we believe, begin with a deep, intense
engagement with poetical texts—both in the original and in translation. But most
major English-language anthologies of Chinese poetry offer only the English
translation. Under such circumstances, students cannot possibly understand how
diverse poetic elements work together in the original. In translation, many Chi-
nese poems, especially those written in a highly condensed style, can easily appear
hackneyed.
Real engagement with poetical texts should be nothing less than an intense
visual, oral, and aural experience. Like Chinese readers, students should be able to
see the physical shape of a poem in Chinese, read it out loud, and hear it read flu-
ently in the original. So, departing from the common practice of presenting only
English translations, we provide Chinese texts, romanizations, a sound recording,
and word-for-word translations as well. With only a few exceptions, the poems pre-
sented in this anthology are translated by the contributors.
The inclusion of the Chinese texts reveals the nonalphabetical nature of Chi-
nese writing. The romanizations make apparent the monosyllabic and tonal nature
of Chinese characters. They carry tone marks that will aid students in reading the
poems aloud or reciting them in modern standard Chinese (Mandarin). In some
chapters, we also give samples of reconstructed ancient and medieval pronuncia-
tions to show how the poems were probably pronounced when they were com-