"Ascending Stork Tower" Classical Chinese Poem

Hi everyone and welcome to Learn Chinese Now brought to you by italki.com. Today we're going to look at another famous classical Chinese poem, Ascending Stork Tower. This is a Tang Dynasty poem written by the poet Wang Zhihuan in the early 8th century in the regulated verse style. That is the type of poetry that was popular in the Tang Dynasty where every line has the same number of characters, most commonly five. The poems are written in couplets and the length is set to four, eight or unlimited lines if it goes beyond eight. There were also some poems of six but less common. The arrangement of the characters with certain tones is also regulated to a specific pattern although a lot of this has been lost when the poems are read in modern Mandarin Chinese since the tones have changed since the Tang Dynasty. Cantonese pronunciation is closer to the original but not exactly the same. So first let's read the poem. So let's take a look at the first line. So the first line reads So this can be thought of as the white sun reaches its end resting on the mountains. The sun sets resting on the mountains. The character jìn is used a lot in classical Chinese and takes some getting used to. In this context since it is related to the sun it means the sun sets. Huanghe means the yellow river, one of the two major rivers in China together with the Yangtze River. The yellow river got its name because of the yellow sediment that gives it its colour. Ru means to enter, hai is the sea and liu means to flow. So we can translate this as the yellow river flows into the sea. So the first two lines are kind of describing what the author can see. The last two lines are more connected together. In order to achieve this I will do that. Yu means to desire, qiong is another character that is similar to jìn. In this context it means to go to the limits of. Qianli is 1000 li, a Chinese unit of measurement equal to about half a kilometre in modern terms although its length has changed throughout history and in the Tang dynasty it was equal to maybe a bit over 300 metres. Mu means eye or eyes. So the whole line reads to go to the limits of 1000 li eyes. This line doesn't translate so well into English but you can think of it as the poet desires to see as far as he can. So gèng shàng yì chéng lóu, gèng means further, pretty much the same meaning as in modern Chinese, shàng to ascend, to go up, yì is one, chéng means level or story, lóu is pagoda. So I ascend one more level of the pagoda and that pagoda is Stork Tower that is in the title Ascending Stork Tower. Stork Tower was a pagoda built in Shanxi province in the northern and southern dynasties period by a northern Zhou dynasty general called Yuwen Hu. It served as a lookout post for the military and because of storks nesting in the structure it ended up being called Stork Tower. The tower overlooked the Yellow River and was three storeys high. The original tower was destroyed by a fire during a battle in the Yuan dynasty and because the Yellow River changed its course in the Ming dynasty the original position of the tower is hard to determine. But in Shanxi province they have now built a new Stork Tower as a tourist attraction. The building was opened in 2002. I hope you guys enjoyed that classical Chinese poem. Would you like more of these? Let us know in the comments below. This episode was brought to you by italki.com. Check out their site for online Chinese lessons as low as $10 an hour. I really recommend their service. Check out the link or paste it into your browser to find out more and access a buy one get one free deal. Thanks. See you guys. Like you've been punched in the stomach. You'll remember it after that, right? To put this in a little sentence to say you're hungry you can say