“枫桥夜泊” –Language can stimulate something deeper

Dantong

As is known to many people, the past February is one of the most important months for Chinese people, because it is the month for celebrating Chinese new year, which is also called the Spring Festival. During the Spring Festival, Chinese New Year’s Eve is the first day for the family reunion, accordingly, no matter how far away from home, Chinese people are always eager to get back home on this day and stay with their loving families. However, for those Chinese people who need to work or study abroad and cannot go back home, you might see that they use various ways to express their homesick feelings or emotions. For example, here is a news that I saw on the Chinese New Year’s Eve.

The man above is a Chinese old man who was spotted writing a poem with water onto the salt-covered ground at Lionel-Groulx station. The poem featured in the photo above is the beginning of the poem, “枫桥夜泊”（Night Mooring at Maple Bridge）by 张继（Zhang Ji, a Chinese poet who lived sometime between 715 and 780 A.D. in the Tang Dynasty. I think the majority of the Chinese people know this poem since it is so famous that every student in primary school is supposed to recite it. Here is the complete version of the poem: 

《枫桥夜泊》
　张继　 　　
月落乌啼霜满天，江枫渔火对愁眠。　
姑苏城外寒山寺，夜半钟声到客船。

The meaning of this poem is: The moon is setting. The crows are crying. The atmosphere is heavy with a chilly autumn frost. The maple trees and the lights of the fishing boats are reflected in the water. Yet I am unable to sleep because of sorrow. I vaguely hear the bells are ringing in the Temple of Frost Hill outside of Suzhou city at midnight. 

The poem describes that the poet’s experience of taking a boat through Suzhou City. The boat is resting at night. The clear view at night and the sound of bells make the author feel very lonely and homesick.

When I saw the picture above of this old man writing the traditional Chinese rhyming poem at one of the metro stations far away from home in Montreal on Chinese New Year’s Eve, I could totally understand his feelings. Not only because I shared the similar homesick and melancholy emotions as a student studying abroad, but more importantly, I resonated with something deeper about the traditional knowledge and culture through the Chinese characters and the language he wrote. The stories, the feelings of the poet behind the poem that I learned, the sceneries of Suzhou City and Hanshan Temple that I visited, and even the “古筝曲” （Chinese Zither Music）I once played, which is telling the story of the same ancient city (姑苏城) described in the poem, all of them flowed into my mind at the moment when I saw the Chinese characters in the picture above. According to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, language is viewed as a meditational means and a tool for transmission of culture and knowledge from one generation to the next. Language is more than a communication tool; it is a powerful tool that provides access to a rich heritage, including history, philosophy, literature and poetry (Vygotsky, 1978, 1986). Through the language of this poem, I was brought so close to the rich heritage of Chinese culture.

I think this poem is also a good example of small hand-made linguistic landscape. I noticed many Chinese people left comments under this news that they really had resonance with it. Some of them even introduced the knowledge about the Tang dynasty rhyming poems. Gorter (2006) stated that the linguistic landscape is the visibility of languages on objects that mark the public space in a given territory. It includes these linguistic objects that are “road signs, names of sites, streets, buildings, places and institutions as well as advertising billboards, commercial shop signs and even personal visiting cards.” As a multicultural city, Montreal is a good place to discover all kinds of linguistic landscapes.

PS: This is a Tang dynasty rhyming poem. Tang dynasty rhyming poems are the most popular of traditional Chinese poetry. They are usually in terse five-character or seven-character sets and meant to be read aloud. What’s so interesting about this poem, and poems of this kind, are the endless possibilities for translation, because the Chinese characters are simple descriptions of the setting around the narrator.

However, here is one translation to consider:

The moon sets, crows cry in the frosty air.

Under maple trees by the river, a fisherman’s light disturbs my sleep.

Outside Suzhou city, from Hanshan Temple

The midnight bell comes to my boat.

References:

Gorter, D. (2006). Introduction: The Study of the Linguistic Landscape as a New Approach to Multilingualism. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3:1, 1-6.

Slanisky , L.（2019, February 4）Man Spotted Writing Beautiful Chinese Poetry On STM Metro Platforms In Montreal. Retrieved from https://www.mtlblog.com/spotted/man-spotted-writing-beautiful-chinese-poetry-on-stm-metro-platforms-in-montreal-video

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.