38. The Moon of Mountain Guan

A poem by Li Bai, translated by Hyun Woo Kim

The bright moon rises at Mountain Tian,

Amid the sea of clouds, far and boundless.

The long wind, some tens of thousand lis,

Blows through the Gateway Yumen.

The Hans come down the Road Baideng;

The barbarians spy on the Bay of Qinghai.

The land of conquests and wars, from beginning,

Has never seen any man return.

Drifters guarding the border, looking at the frontier's sight,

Think of going back―much bitterness in their faces.

A high pavilion will be befitting for tonight;

Likely, their sighs will know no boundaries.

「關山月」

明月出天山

蒼茫雲海間

長風幾萬里

吹度玉門關

漢下白登道

胡窺靑海灣

由來征戰地

不見有人還

戍客望邊色

思歸多苦顔

高樓當此夜

嘆息未應閑

From Hyun Woo:

You might have had a question right after reading the first line of this week’s poem: why is it called “The Moon of Mountain Guan” when it seems to talk about the moon of Mountain Tian? The reason is that today’s poem is a yuefu. Yuefu originally meant folk songs collected by the Chinese government, but the term also refers to poems written in the style of such folk songs. Through the title, Li Bai reveals that he wrote his poem after the song The Moon of Mountain Guan. The original song was lost in history, but there are many poems that bear the same name.

Hans are an ethnic group that accounts for 92% of contemporary Chinese nationals. While the official position of the current Chinese government is that all other ethnic groups are “Chinese” too, such a view had not been widely shared in China until the 20th century. In fact, the Chinese word for the Chinese language, Hanyu, literally means “Han language”. The others, the non-Hans, were simply regarded as “barbarians” and often engaged in armed conflicts with Hans.

Li Bai describes the scenery of the frontier where such conflicts took place in his poem. Hans at the frontier do not belong there: they are “drifters” and want to go back home. However, “The land […h]as never seen any man return”, and they will all likely die at the front. Accordingly, a “high pavilion will be befitting for tonight”, where people can look far.

If you enjoyed my work, you can buy me a cup of tea. I am not a coffee person, by the way.