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AnonymousChristine..I agree with you completely. We need to be able to trust the level of expertise of the translators. Just because one person has great credentials doesn't make him or her the perfect choice. We need to look at that persons background, what makes them feel a passage should be this way or that way. This is a great analogy to eye witness testimony. Find six witnesses to an event, you will get 6 different stories. Much like your telephone comparison. People bring their own histories, ideas and thoughts into their work. One remedy is to read a passage or story by multiple authors. If only we had that much time. So I still go back to trusting the translator and that means looking at multiple volumes...much like having to kiss a bunch of frogs to find that prince.
AnonymousI have been re-reading some of the poems from the book. Does anyone else get the feeling of a sense of impermanence, transience, even death from many of the poems? To me, a lot of the poetry is Daoist in nature. Cannot have winter without summer. Some of the poems strike me as hopeful, some come across as more forlorn.
Similar with some of the Japanese poetry from this weeks reading. Especially numbers 671 and 672. Number 677 (Lament) is also powerful. “Have you not learned before this that all things must always change.” Even a love poem has a sense of foreboding to it. Number 700, “The end of my life - that is all I can wait for, after last night.”
To me, I am seeing some strong similarities between Chinese and Japanese poetry. Delightful, powerful, and causing introspection. I am just trying to find a way to bring these feelings to my students. We have been discussing poetry, I’ve introduced some rap songs, some Maya Angelou, and I’m starting with some of the Chinese poems. Interesting how they interpret the poems in much the same way we did when we were discussing them. This coincides with the point I made earlier and Christine talked about. Even if the poems are translated correctly, just as the author wanted, the personal interpretation of the reader can be different than what the author intended.
AnonymousWell, I'd read Korean poetry translated into English and thought it didn't quite catch the sentiment in the original version. Sometimes it didn't even make sense. When I knew nothing about the original version, I thought I acquired some sense of understanding about the reading. I grew up in Korea and had to read books translated into Korean. When I read those books in English again, they were not the same books I read before in Korean.
AnonymousI would like to use more literature and poetry in my class to enrich the curriculum. Haiku is done but I'd really like to incorporate more to the study of Asian poetry, but appropriate for sheltered 6th graders in LAUSD. Any input on titles would be great.
AnonymousLet me try to translate an old Korean poem into English and tell me what you think about it.
If I die a thousand deaths,
If all my bones turn into ashes,
Will my love for you ever be tarnished?
How would you interpret it? 
AnonymousArthur, I sure do agree with you. I think, in many aspects, Chinese literature has heavily influenced Japanese and Korean literature and they do share the same insights about life and human nature as you have observed. They do focus a lot on introspection and transient nature of things. They do use analogies and metaphors to compare and contrast human nature to the Mother nature.
AnonymousWhat I've enjoyed about reading the Chinese poems in the books and articles given to us in seminar is the insights these poems provide in the daily lives of ordinary people in China. Through the poems we learn how the Chinese dealt with common human experiences like love, war, work, experience of nature, etc. We learn about their fears and hopes. In Chapter 4 of Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook by Patricia buckley Ebrey, some poems from the Book of Songs dating from the Zhou period are provided. I enjoyed reading the very last poem in this chapter. In this poem, the experience of a soldier is recorded. The poet tries to convey the hardship a soldier must endure. The poem engraves in the reader's mind the image of a tired soldier incessantly marching and pushing forward. The poem captures the loss of identity of the individual soldier. The poem is as follows: (note the poignant lines in the second and third stanza which conveys a soldier's loss of dignity as a man)
Which plant is not yellow?
Which day don't we march?
Which man does not go
To bring peace to the four quarters?
Which plant is not brown?
Which man is not sad?
Have pity on us soldiers,
Treated as though we were not men!
We are neither rhinos nor tigers
Yet are led through the wilds.
Have pity on us soldiers,
Never resting morn or night.
A thick-furred fox
Scurries through the dark grass.
Our loaded carts
Proceed along the Zhou road.
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It never ceases to amaze me how such a simple poem can convey so much. This inherent power of poetry is why it is important for educators to incorporate poetry in the classroom.
The repetition of the phrase "have pity on us soldiers" in the second and third stanza reinforce the hardship soldiers endure. This imperative sentence poignantly makes the empathetic reader want to have pity.
I know many of the poems in the Book of Songs were sung. I wonder what melody guided this sad poem? Imagine the current Call-and-Response songs sung by military platoons on a hike singing to the words of this poem!
I believe incorporating such primary source poetry in a history classroom is important because it helps students better appreciate Chinese history and will reveal common human experiences that cut across time and space.