You have just come from our native place，dear fellow,
What happened there you should have known.
On the day you came，before your gorgeous window,
Were the winter plums in blossom grown?
Original Poem:
「杂诗」
王维
君自故乡来， 应知故乡事。
来日绮窗前， 寒梅著花未。
Interpretation:
This poem mainly expresses the nostalgic feelings of a wanderer.
The main character of this poem is a traveler who has been living in another country for a long time. When he suddenly meets a friend from his hometown in another country, he is instantly stirred up with infinite homesickness. How would like to know more about his hometown. So he asked eagerly.
The last two lines are the formal questions about the hometown. There are a lot of things that I long to know about my hometown: Is my family healthy? How are your friends? Are the mountains, rivers, scenery and customs still the same? But I didn’t ask any of these questions. Instead, I chose a seemingly insignificant question: “Has the cold plum blossomed yet?” Did the plum blossom in front of my window when you came here? It may seem counterintuitive to ask about the plum blossom instead of the family member who cares most about it, but when you think about it, it’s not. Sometimes, we tend to have such a mentality, the more concerned about things, may instead be the more afraid to speak out, had to ask the seemingly irrelevant plum blossoms.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Wang Wei (王维), 701-761 A.D., was a native of Yuncheng, Shanxi Province. Wang Wei was a poet of landscape and idylls. His poems of landscape and idylls, with far-reaching images and mysterious meanings, were widely loved by readers in later generations, but Wang Wei never really became a man of landscape and idylls.
