A magical rain is falling

The Book of Songs (Shijing) contains the seeds of later Chinese landscape poetry.  Its oldest poems are around three thousand years old but here I wanted to draw attention to one rare example that can be attached to a particular date, 658 BCE, when the people of Wei were forced to abandon their capital north of the Yellow River. In his translations Arthur Waley explains that they built a new capital 'in a narrow strip between Shandong and Henan. In their move they were assisted and protected by Duke Huan of Qi, who sent a gift of three hundred horses'. The poem begins by describing the building of houses, oriented according to the sun. Alongside these they planted hazels, chestnuts-trees, catalpas, Paulownias and lacquer trees, 'that we may make the zithers great and small.'  I really like the idea of prioritising musical instrument making when designing a city. The poem then briefly describes a journey to look down on what they had created. 

We climb to that wilderness

To look down at Chu,

To look upon Chu and Tang,

Upon the Jing hills and the citadel. 

We go down and inspect mulberry orchards, 

We take the omens and they are lucky, 

All of them truly good. 

 

A magical rain is falling. 

We order our grooms 

By starlight, early to, to yoke our steeds; 

We drive to the mulberry-fields and there we rest...

This anonymous poem is one of the 'Airs of the States', in this case one of the 'Airs of Yong' (a small principality later absorbed into Wei).  As you read these poems certain lines leap out which transport you to the natural world of ancient China: its fields and orchards, mountains and rivers. As an experiment I tried extracting some of these phrases from the first five states in The Book of Songs, including Yong.

  

Zhou

Climbing a high ridge

Cutting boughs that have been lopped and grown again

Plucking and gathering plantain

Water mallow growing in patches

Cloth-plant spread across the midst of the valley

Blazing flowers of a peach tree

 A 'cloth-plant' (ge)

Shao 

Gathering white aster down in the ravine

Climbing the southern hill to pluck the fern-shoots

Covering with white rushes a dead doe

The flowers of the cherry

Paths drenched in dew

Thunder on the sun-side of the southern hills

 White China aster

Bei

Building earth-works at the capital

Gazing after a swallow

Off in a boat, floating, floating far away

A gentle wind from the south

A cloudless dawn begins to break

On the hills grows a hazel-tree

Chinese hazel

 

Yong

Going to gather goosefoot

I walk in the wilderness

We drive to the mulberry-fields and there we rest

Quails bicker

Thick grows the caltrop

A magical rain is falling

 Goosefoot

Wei

Drumming and dancing in the gully

She rests where the fields begin

She threw a quince at me

Kitesfoot so fresh

Reeds and sedges tower high

The mulberry-leaves have fallen

 

Mulberry leaf