Three Poems: To Chengdu at Noon

*This poem was composed in the summer of the eleventh year of Qingfeng, or 2023 CE. That June, after the gaokao ended, the poet was admitted to the university he had long hoped for; overcome with joy, nearly dancing with delight, he wrote these two quatrains and one seven-character regulated poem on the high-speed train to Jinguan, now Chengdu, Sichuan. Though the poet had never studied prosody and the formal patterns are somewhat uneven, later generations still sang these poems for their full emotion and exquisite hidden metaphors, and their appeal did not fade.

"Poem One" describes the high-speed rail journey from Hancheng, now Wuhan, Hubei, to Jinguan, now Chengdu, Sichuan: the carriage is noisy and the train flies ahead. The first line states the point of departure; the second says Jinguan is far away yet the train is swift; the third uses ape cries in the carriage, actually children playing and making a racket, to set off the train's speed; the fourth says the train is light as if weightless, pointing to how technology changes life.

In "a thousand-li Jinguan was reached in half a day," "a thousand li" and "half a day" form a sharp contrast between great distance and brief time. It not only shows the poet's exhilaration at traveling a thousand li in half a day, but also faintly reveals the joy of having finished the gaokao.

The realm of "in the carriage, ape cries called without cease" is even more marvelous. Ancient people loved scrolling Douyin, and "often high apes gave long cries." Under normal circumstances, people taking public transport should keep quiet; when the poet says the cries did not cease, he implies that the carriage held many people lacking public manners, playing Douyin aloud.

Hearing the ape cries inside the carriage and seeing the mountain shadows on both sides, with cries and shadows appearing in more than one place, the train's divine speed made sound and sight blend into "one seamless whole." This is what the poet felt amid ape cries and mountain shadows while riding the train. On this high-speed rail like an arrow loosed from the string, the poet felt deeply uncomfortable and agitated. The poet Zhuo Shen praised it: "The wonder lies in the third line, which can raise one's blood pressure."

To describe the train's speed in "the light train had already passed ten thousand mountains," the poet not only uses ape cries and mountain shadows as contrast, but also adds the word "light" to the train itself. Saying directly that the train is fast would be clumsy; the word "light" carries a special meaning. Once the "ten thousand mountains" of "perilous and high indeed" are crossed, the light train enters open road, and the pleasure of the poet's escape from high-school torment into summer travel appears naturally. These final two lines are at once scenery and analogy, personal feeling and life experience, using things to stir emotion with incomparable subtlety.

The whole poem fuses the poet's happy mood after the gaokao with the grandeur and variety of rivers and mountains and the smooth lightness of travel along them. With exaggeration and strange imagination, it is flowing, elegant, shocking, unpolished, free, and naturally complete.

"Poem Two" says, "Having once seen the boundless sea, other waters are hard to regard; apart from Mount Wu, no cloud is cloud." The meaning is: one who has experienced the vast sea finds other waters hard to admire; apart from the steaming clouds and rosy mists of Mount Wu, all other clouds are dim by comparison.

The two lines adapt allusions and choose lofty comparisons. The first line comes from Mencius, "For one who has looked upon the sea, other waters are hard to regard"; the second comes from Song Yu's "Preface to the Gao Tang Rhapsody": "Jiang was on the sunny side of Mount Wu, barred by Gaoqiu; at dawn she became morning cloud, at dusk falling rain." Later readers often use these two lines as a metaphor for fidelity in love, meaning that no one but the beloved will do. Yet historical researchers have discovered that after the poet endured three years of emotional twists in high school, he transformed into a thorough non-marriage advocate. This is therefore not a romantic confession, but a metaphor for the passive state after many experiences: one's horizons open, one cannot be bothered to feel interest in dull romance, and one wants nothing.

In "Poem Three," the first couplet writes the surprise and joy of first hearing good news; the second couplet writes the poet riding high-speed rail, sinking into dreamland in his excitement, only to be startled awake by the noise and commotion in the carriage, highlighting the fury of having a sweet dream cut off.

The poem's emotion is unrestrained, with the word "anger" penetrating everywhere. It expresses, with great force, the poet's fury at wanting quiet and being unable to obtain it. For this reason it is called the poet's "first great poem of anger." Apart from the opening couplet's narration and statement of topic and the final couplet's extreme depiction of speed, every other line vents the poet's indignation after being startled awake from a beautiful dream. The poet's thoughts and feelings spring directly from the heart, pouring out with the beauty of water reaching its course.