The war-chariots rattle,
The war-horses whinny.
Each man of you has a bow and a quiver at his belt.
Father, mother, son, wife, stare at you going,
Till dust shall have buried the bridge beyond Changan.
They run with you, crying, they tug at your sleeves,
And the sound of their sorrow goes up to the clouds;
And every time a bystander asks you a question,
You can only say to him that you have to go.
...We remember others at fifteen sent north to guard the river
And at forty sent west to cultivate the campfarms.
The mayor wound their turbans for them when they started out.
With their turbaned hair white now, they are still at the border,
At the border where the blood of men spills like the sea --
And still the heart of Emperor Wu is beating for war.
...Do you know that, east of China's mountains, in two hundred districts
And in thousands of villages, nothing grows but weeds,
And though strong women have bent to the ploughing,
East and west the furrows all are broken down?
...Men of China are able to face the stiffest battle,
But their officers drive them like chickens and dogs.
Whatever is asked of them,
Dare they complain?
For example, this winter
Held west of the gate,
Challenged for taxes,
How could they pay?
...We have learned that to have a son is bad luck-
It is very much better to have a daughter
Who can marry and live in the house of a neighbour,
While under the sod we bury our boys.
...Go to the Blue Sea, look along the shore
At all the old white bones forsaken --
New ghosts are wailing there now with the old,
Loudest in the dark sky of a stormy day.
Original Poem:
「兵车行」
杜甫
车辚辚，马萧萧， 行人弓箭各在腰。
耶娘妻子走相送， 尘埃不见咸阳桥。
牵衣顿足拦道哭， 哭声直上干云霄。
道旁过者问行人， 行人但云点行频。
或从十五北防河， 便至四十西营田。
去时里正与裹头， 归来头白还戍边。
边亭流血成海水， 武皇开边意未已。
君不闻， 汉家山东二百州，
千村万落生荆杞？
纵有健妇把锄犁， 禾生陇亩无东西。
况复秦兵耐苦战， 被驱不异犬与鸡。
长者虽有问， 役夫敢申恨；
且如今年冬， 未休关西卒。
县官急索租， 租税从何出？
信知生男恶， 反是生女好；
生女犹得嫁比邻， 生男埋没随百草。
君不见，青海头， 古来白骨无人收？
新鬼烦冤旧鬼哭， 天阴雨湿声啾啾。
Interpretation:
This poem was written around 751 AD. At that time, China was at war with Tubo for many years. The frequent wars brought great disasters to the people, separating them from each other, leaving them to die, desolating their farms, demanding rents and levying taxes, and making them live in dire straits. The wars also caused soldiers to be bloodied and buried in the wilderness. This poem is a reflection of this social reality, expressing the people’s suffering from the call of conscription, full of anti-war thoughts and emotions.
The poem can be divided into three paragraphs. In the first paragraph, the poet writes about the tragic scene of his relatives crying to send off the conscripts. Soldier car rumbles, war horse neighs, the poor people who were captured, one by one, wearing military attire, wearing bow and arrow, was escorted to the front line. The wives of the conscripts were running and crying, holding their clothes and stopping the road, beating their chests and feet to prevent their relatives from being pulled away. The dust raised by the carts and horses covered the sky and even the bridge across the WeiShui River! It was really a stream of cars, horses and people, and the cries of the people were everywhere, reaching up to the sky. This is a tragic picture of parting of life and death!
In the second paragraph, the poet set up a question, so that the conscripts directly complained about the disaster brought by the war to the people. Due to the frequent conscription, many conscripts were pulled into the army from their youth and were still fighting until their old age. Although the Qin soldiers were able to endure the hardships of war, they were often rushed to and fro like chickens and dogs, and the fate of the conscripts was so bitter that it could be imagined! The war also brought serious disasters to the rear: although there are women farming, but thousands of villages, production withered, thorns and thistles, fields are barren, sparsely populated. The poet puts what he sees and hears, the front and the back into one, comprehensively showing the evils of the war, expanding the connotation of the poem, deepening the strength of the poem’s ideas.
In the third stanza, the poet again exposes the disasters brought by the war in the form of questions and answers. The levies are not allowed to rest for a long time; the government urgently presses for rent, and the rent tax does not know where to come from. From the bitter of the conscripts and the urgent demand for rent, the poet reveals the double suffering of the people caused by the militaristic Tang Dynasty! Finally, the poet depicts the ancient battlefield by the Qinghai Lake in a mournful tone, with white bones on the ground, ghosts crying and gods howling, and a miserable wind. The eerie and cold scene is chilling.
This poem in the artistic expression, the use of three words, five words, seven words, and even ten words of the sentence pattern, with a sharp, soothing rhythm, respectively, to express the urgency, indignation, pain, grief, thought and emotion, the plain language, the use of the rhetorical pattern, so that the whole poem has a loop back and forth, the feeling of melancholy and staccato.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Du Fu (杜甫), 712 – 770 AD, was a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, known as the “Sage of Poetry”. Born into a declining bureaucratic family, Du Fu had a rough life, and his turbulent and dislocated life made him keenly aware of the plight of the masses. Therefore, his poems were always closely related to the current affairs, reflecting the social life of that era in a more comprehensive way, with profound thoughts and a broad realm. In his poetic art, he was able to combine many styles, forming a unique style of “profound and thick”, and becoming a great realist poet in the history of China.
