larryhammer | “Few people know what fish think about injustice, or anything else.”

Books 869-872 of Complete Tang Poems is 谐谑, xiéxuè, banter/repartee—IOW, poems of humor and mockery. Do I want to dive deep into this? Yes—yes, I do. Duh. But for now, instead, here’s translations of a random handful that caught my eye.

I have even less standing to do this than I did the ghost poems. I can tell I’m missing wordplay and am even weaker on cultural context—and indeed, I failed to get anywhere with more than half the poems I tried. IOW, don’t make much of how three of the four are one specific genre—these were the easiest to make sense of, and Chinese humor ranges well beyond these examples.

Still, these few were fun.

In Praise of the Hedgehog, Li or Zhu Zhenbai
Walking, he seems a shifting pin-cushion,
At rest, he’s curled like a chestnut-burr.
He can’t be bullied like us big folks:
Who dares to casually punch the guy?

咏刺猬
行似针毡动，
卧若栗球圆。
莫欺如此大，
谁敢便行拳。

The author is listed under both surnames in different texts (he’s included in both Tang and Song anthologies), and scholars have suggested that one or the other was a penname, without consensus as to which. Biographical data is slim, but since both Tang and Song anthologies include the short Five Dynasties period that came between their respective big dynasties, the mid-900s seems likely.

In Praise of the Crab, Li or Zhu Zhenbai
Cicada eyes, a tortoise body, legs like a spider,
Never facing you straight on while hurrying off—
And now he’s food displayed upon a banquet tray.
So that disorder left the rivers-and-lakes, you say?

咏蟹
蝉眼龟形脚似蛛，
未曾正面向人趋。
如今飣在盘筵上，
得似江湖乱走无。

According to the headnote in some texts, this was improvised in response to a challenge at a banquet celebrating a naval commander who had put down a revolt. Wordplay: a disorder [of] the rivers-and-lakes is both the anatomical mishmash that is the aquatic crab, and civil disorder among the populace—IOW, he’s roasting the guest of honor by implying he did an incomplete job. And yes, rivers-and-lakes is also the jiānghú demimonde, the setting of wuxia tales—I understand the genre sense comes from the more general sense of “places remote from orderly cities” used here, but I could be wrong.

Mocking Each Other, Gan Qia and Wang Xianke
Qia:
Wang, you need to manage your family’s fields—
For though your face is round like a curled-up otter,
Still you have to puff your hollow cheeks.

Xianke:
Gan, you need to manage your family’s fortune—
For since your head is never bending down,
How will you ever raise your standing up?

互嘲

王，计尔应姓田。
为你面拨獭，
抽却你两边。——洽

甘，计尔应姓丹。
为你头不曲，
回脚向上安。——仙客

TLDR: “You look like you’re starving” — “You suck at sucking up.” I’ve no info about either poet. Added in translation: round and hollow to clarify the image. Probable idiom: fortune is a bit of a guess—the original is 丹, cinnabar/vermilion, which suggests both official advancement (because imperial edicts were written in vermilion ink) and immortality (because cinnabar was used in elixirs). At least, those appear to be the relevant senses here. Maybe?

I love the phrase “your face [is] a curled-up otter,” though.

In Praise of the Toad, Jiang Yigong
Always crouching down, looking the same all over.
To men he tries to show those great big, endless eyes.
Should you want to know if you yourself are small,
Try seeing your reflection in a filled hoof-print.

咏虾蟆
坐卧兼行总一般，
向人努眼太无端。
欲知自己形骸小，
试就蹄涔照影看。

Jiang Yigong was a Five-Dynasties guy from Suzhou who made a name for himself for righteous satires, finding much material in his troubled times. Unlike a lot of the other comic poets from this section, he also has poems in the main part of CTP. 虾蟆, háma is used for both frogs and toads—to keep it snappy, I picked one. A probably relevant connotation of small is humble.

Yyyyeah, there’s reasons why I didn’t do more of these. Much harder to understand, let alone render well, than even the ghost poems and children’s rhymes.

Index of Chinese translations

Subject quote from Catwings, Ursula K. Le Guin.