Lantern Poems and Riddle Clubs

I’ve been reading The Adventures of Wu by H. Y. Lowe (盧興源), a fascinating narrative journey through traditional life in Old Beijing, and I found the following explanation of lantern riddles (燈謎, pg. I.98).

Making and solving riddles or conundrums is a highly developed literary pursuit in China and is the universal hobby of all learned scholars. They are known as teng mi (燈迷), or “lantern riddles,” on account of the fact that originally they were written on strips of paper and hung up on a paper lantern for the public to solve—a very interesting out-door pastime for talented “men of letters.” The lanterns were necessary as the meetings were almost always nocturnal. The riddle clubs’ meetings are still observable in Peking’s side streets and quiet lanes during hot summer evenings. Very often they compose riddles by quotations from famous poems as the question, called mien (面) or “face,” and using the sub-title in a Chinese story-book, or a sentence from the classics, or a popular proverb, or the name of a famous play or an actor, as the answer, called li (裡) or “lining.” They are very difficult for a beginner, and provide more fun and brain-twisting than a combination of the foreign conundrums mixed with the hardest of cross-word puzzles.

 It seems there may have been at a few Manchu literati who composed lantern riddles for each other, and some of these were included in the Staatsbibliothek poems. Here is one whose title is Old Person Lantern.

	sakda niyalma dengjan [老人燈],		Old Person Lantern
	Staatsbibliothek 14.27 (View Online)
	sakda durun,		The shape of the old person:
	fisa kumcuhun,		Bent of back,
	niyengse arbun,		thin of form,
	adu nekeliyen,		clothing meager,
5	duha wenjehun,		guts warm,
	yasa getuken,		eyes clear,
	kalcun sain,		spirit good,
	mujakū huwekiyen,		truly happy.
	aide teifun,		Where is the staff?
10	umesi katun,		Very strong!
	juse dasu-i feniyen,		A flock of children.
	niorokoi efin,		A game of bewitching,
	seinggei simen,		the vitality of the aged one,
	naranggi eden,		after all is lacking,
15	gereke de kapahūn.		when dawn comes, small in stature.

On the face of it, this is a poem about an elderly person, but since it’s a riddle the answer must be something else.

New lexical items

One of the things that makes Manchu poetry difficult to read is that about 5% of the vocabulary consists of words that are not found in most (or all) dictionaries. As a remedy, I have been working through Jakdan’s translations of Chinese poetry, and using that to build a lexicon of Manchu poetic usage. I haven’t posted much lately because this process doesn’t produce new translations of original Manchu works, but to keep things on this blog interesting I'll start posting the new lexical items that I find. Here are three recent ones, with more to follow.

gerikešembi, to twinkle (of stars) (J6.46); usiha tumen uce-i ishun gerikešehei, [星臨萬戶動] “as the stars twinkle on the myriad households,” from Dù Fǔ’s 春宿左省, line 3.

simiyan, repository (J6.40); dergi boode nirugan bithei simiyan, [東壁圖書府] “in the East Room, a repository of pictures and books,” from Zhāng Yuè’s 麗正殿書院賜宴應制, line 1.

tonombi, to roost (J6.46); gūr gar tonoro cecike duleke, [啾啾棲鳥過] “twittering, the roosting birds have passed by,” from Dù Fǔ’s 春宿左省, line 2.

The word jedebule

In Resigning as Prime Minister I wondered if Jakdan inserted a specifically Manchu cultural reference into his translation by adding the word takan, “mustard greens.”

In his translation of The Lament of Jiéyú by Huángfǔ Rǎn he seems to have done it again with the word jedebule.

花枝出建章，		giyan jang gurung-ni ilhai gesengge tucike,
鳳管發昭陽。		jao yang deyen-i garudangga sihakū jedebule,
借問承恩者，		bai dacilaki doshon be aliha gegese,
雙蛾幾許長。		juru faitan antaka šuwar seme yangse.

The flowery ones of Jiànzhāng palace have come out,
The phoenix flutes of Zhāoyáng hall are [jedebule].
May I ask you, young ladies who receive favor,
How is it your eyebrows are so [šuwar seme] beautiful?

Jakdan uses the word jedebule to translate Chinese fā [發], but what does it actually mean? It is not inflected, and its placement suggests either a noun or an adjective.

The Qianlong dictionary explains jedebule as follows: kukji haijan be uculere de deribure mudan, “a starting tune when singing kukji and haijan.” The word haijan is further explained: ucun-i mudan kukji de adali, “the tune of a song, like kukji,̦” and kukji is explained as maksire de uculere ucun-i mudan, “the tune of a song where one jumps when one sings.”

From this, it seems jedebule refers to a type of tune that starts a type of dancing song. Amyot adds a bit of detail here in his definition of haijan: “Contenance des chantres mantchoux, qui imitent en chantant les plis et replis des serpents. On dit aussi kouktchi” – “a capacity of Manchu singers, who imitate in song the bending and folding of snakes. One also says kukji.” It is possible that Amyot witnessed this type of singing first-hand, so we can credit him on this.

Amyot’s definition is interesting for two reasons. The first reason is that it works well with the later šuwar seme used to describe the eyebrows of the young ladies. This onomatopoetic phrase refers to the sound of swords being drawn from their sheaths or of snakes slithering, but obviously eyebrows don’t make a sound, so it apparently refers to the shape or movement of the eyebrows.

The other reason that Amyot’s definition is interesting is that it was apparently misunderstood at some point by later lexicographers, and this misunderstanding has gained a life of its own. At some point Amyot’s replis were taken to mean “replies,” creating a set of definitions (including the best dictionaries in the field) which take either kukji or haijan to mean a call-and-response type of song.

By using jedebule and šuwar seme, Jakdan has anachronistically inserted Manchu cultural performance into a Tang dynasty poem, with the effect of decorating the entire poem with a lively and sinuous movement that was not at all present in the original. I try to reflect this as follows in my translation:

The flowery ones of Jiànzhāng palace have come out,
The phoenix flutes of Zhāoyáng hall strike up a snake-dancing tune.
May I ask you, young ladies who receive favor,
How is it your eyebrows are so sinuously beautiful?

Jakdan the Decoder

Jakdan often translates literary and historical allusions into plain language, giving his readings an earthy, plainspun feel. Sometimes his translations reveal a new side to literary allusions, such as his handling of "the home of Jù Mèng" in the following poem by Qián Qǐ (錢起).

逢俠者		Faršatai yabure niyalma be ucarahangge
燕趙悲歌士，		amargi bai usacukai uculere haha,
相逢劇孟家。		weilere antahai boode lakdari ucarabuha,
寸心言不盡，		mujilen-i gisun gisureme wajire undede,
前路日將斜。		julergi jugūn-i šun dabsire hamika.

On Meeting a Knight Errant

A man from the north singing sorrowfully,
I encountered by chance at a roadside canteen serving parlour.
The sun on the road before us had nearly set,
But he was still not yet finished saying all the words in his heart,


The subject of the poem is a knight errant (also known as 遊俠), a kind of wandering warrior known in stories for defending the weak and fighting the wicked. In the original poem, the author meets him in a certain "home of Jù Mèng" (劇孟家), an allusion to a famous knight errant of the Western Hàn, who lived around nine centuries before the poet was born. The two continue on together, walking into the sunset, as the 'knight errant' pours his heart out to the poet.

Some interpretations take the "home of Jù Mèng" to mean the city of Luòyáng, but Jakdan interprets it differently, using the phrase weilere antahai boo. This term does not appear in my dictionaries, so it needs some decipherment.

Norman has antahai boo meaning "a room for receiving guests," and in spoken Sibe we have antⱨey bo, with the same meaning. But what do we do with the modifying weilere? Literally this seems like it ought to mean "a room for receiving working guests," but what kind of place is that?

The similar Sibe term antⱨey kuren means a hotel, in which the "guest" is actually more of a customer than an acquaintance. It seems possible that a weilere antahai boo then could be a place that welcomes laborers as customers, presumably for a brief rest and refreshment. This could also be the type of place that a lonely traveler might stop to take a break before continuing on his long journey into the west.

Why We Need to Read Chinese Poetry in Manchu

I've been trying to improve my understanding of Manchu poetry by reading Manchu translations of Chinese verse. One of the surprises that has come out of this is that English translators of Chinese poetry often miss important points that are captured in Manchu translations.

As an example, this morning I have been looking at a poem titled Light Rain in Early Spring (初春小雨) by Han Yu (韓愈). Here is the Chinese text, and Jakdan's translation:

天街小雨潤如酥,		alban giyai imenggi-i gesei aga busu busu,
草色遙看近卻無;		orhoi boco gorokici sabucibe cincilaci dule akū;
最是一年春好處,		emu aniyai niyengniyeri saikan ba jing ere,
絕勝煙柳滿皇都.		gubci hecen-i burgašara fodoho ci cingkai fulu.

Jakdan's translation is relatively easy to understand:

The rain, like [a sheen of] oil on Government Service street, falls lightly,
though one sees the color of grass from afar, if one looks closely it is not really there.

Where the Chinese has "Heaven Street" (天街), Jakdan has rendered this as the more prosaic "Government Service Street." Jakdan apparently takes this to be a street in the capital where court officials worked. This goes well with the second line about the color of grass, because in the imperial palace in Beijing green tiles appear on buildings used by court officials, as opposed to yellow tiles on buildings used by the imperial family.

Here we see a quarter of the city where government workers toil away, a place that is probably normally quite dull, but the rain falling on it makes it shine, and from a distance the green tiles look like grass.

This sets us up for the second half:

The most beautiful spring scene of the whole year is this very one,
far better than the willows that loom everywhere over the city.

The conclusion of the poem is that the soft spring rain has transformed an otherwise dreary place into the most beautiful scene to be found anywhere.

Having read Jakdan first, the Chinese is relatively easy to understand. But if I only had access to the Chinese, I doubt I would fare so well, and I'm not alone. Most of the translations and interpretations that I have found of this poem miss the important point that the spring rain has transformed a mundane scene to one of beauty, and focus instead on the concrete imagery of the grass and the willows.

Here are four English translations, all of which treat the grass as literal grass, and take the willows to be the main subject of the second couplet:

https://www.chinlingo.com/articles/601316/
http://www.chinese-poems.com/h3t.html
http://www.learnancientchinesepoetry.org/2019/02/22/han-yu-early-spring-write-to-zhang-the-eighteenth-now-engaged-as-a-flood-control-officer/
https://www.dougwestendorp.com/poetry-journal

Lest we think that these failures are unique to English translators, there is also Baidu article on this poem with a modern Mandarin translation, here:

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%88%9D%E6%98%A5%E5%B0%8F%E9%9B%A8

The Baidu translation takes 酥 to mean "yogurt" (酥酪), which comes across as a little strange. It also takes the grass to be literally present, though "sparse" (稀疏零星) on closer examination, despite the fact that in the original poem the grass is not there at all (無).

The Baidu translator also takes the willows to be the main subject of the last couplet, rendering the last line as 最美不过杨柳满城的长安, "The most beautiful, but for the willow-filled city of Chang'an."

I think it's fair to say we could learn a lot from reading the Manchu translations of Chinese poetry. These were, after all, made by people who were usually closer to the subject than we are.