Ancient Chinese Poetry: A Chinese Poem By A Tartar

家

Hey everyone, welcome back to the ancient Chinese story blog. Today I will be showing a poem from the times of disunity after the fall of the Han dynasty. The poem is by a Tartar named Altun who lived from 486-566 A.D.  His poem is a song he sang about his home. Today, I will not be using my own translation since I do not have the original Chinese text so I will be using Arthur Waley’s translation of this poem. It is known as Tchirek Song. Enjoy todays Chinese Poetry.

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Tchirek River

Lies under the Dark Mountains:

Where the sky is like the sides of a tent

Stretched down over the Great Steppe.

The sky is gray, gray:

And the steppe wide, wide:

Over grass that the wins has battered low

Sheep and oxen roam.

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Altun is interesting because he sang this song since he could not read or write. For anyone interested his name is Gold in Chinese. He is one of many groups of nomads along the northern Chinese frontier of those days. Men like him were often recruited by Chinese military officials to train soldiers in how to fight other Nomadic tribes. This was quite common actually throughout Chinese history when fighting off foreign groups; they would hire another foreign group that was similar to fight and train their soldiers to more efficiently handle the situations.  So while the ancient Chinese Poem is Chinese in the sense of how it was recorded, it is more of minority writing. I think that’s whyI probably first got drawn to this particular poetry.

Today’s word of the day is the Chinese word for home and is also used for family. Feel free to comment and anyone who like to contribute is free to. Till the next ancient Chinese story post everyone. Best of wishes to any who have suffered due to the recent typhoon in Taiwan and southeast China.