Mustard Greens and Friendship

Jakdan's translations of Chinese poetry are very often close in literal meaning to the original Chinese, within the constraints he imposed on himself of matching the rhyme scheme and word-count of the Chinese poem.

In some cases, though, Jakdan departs from the original in interesting ways, and one of these is in his translation of Resigning as Prime Minister (罷相作) by Lǐ Shìzhī (李適之).

This poem runs as follows in Chinese:

避賢初罷相，
樂聖且銜杯。
爲問門前客，
今朝幾個來。

There are a number of interpretations of the meaning of the original poem. It is certainly clear that Lǐ has resigned from his post as prime minister, and is drinking, and asks how many guests are (or will be) at the door. Looking over interpretations and discussions on the internet, some people believe Lǐ is depressed, and now that he is no longer important no one comes to his door. Others believe that retiring from his formal position frees him up to drink, and he hopes to have visitors to drink with.

Jakdan has a different take on it, which should not necessarily be considered more authoritative, but is interesting in its own right:

saisa anabufi saisiyang ci nakanggala,
bolgo nure hojo takan omicina,
fonjime tuwa dukai juleri antahasa,
tetele isinjirengge giyanakū udu niyalma.

Below is my translation from Jakdan. When I first posted this, I used the second person in the first couplet is based on the optative -cina, which Verbiest says is used when making a request to a superior. However, after encountering -cina in another poem where it clearly refers to the first person, I have come back to amend this translation.

Before I resign in defeat from the post of Prime Minister,
I hope to drink clear wine with satisfying mustard greens;
Ask and see, of guests before the gate,
How many have arrived so far?

Jakdan's version of the second line is quite different from Chinese, and is really the inspiration for this post. Where the Chinese might be understood as something like "for the time being, the happy sage takes a cup", Jakdan has dropped the happy sage, turned the cup into wine, and added hojo takan, which I translate as "satisfying wild mustard greens."

The greens are not entirely out of place, since pickled or salted vegetables were served with wine. But they are not present in the Chinese at all, and since Jakdan adheres to five words per line in these translations something had to be sacrificed if the wild greens were to be added. Apparently it was more important to fit the greens in than to keep some version of the "happy sage." What was his motivation for doing this?

The motivation may lie in a double entendre around the word takan. This word looks like it could be a nominal form of takambi, "to know someone" (the same way gūnin is a nominal form of gūnimbi). Is it possible that one might serve wild mustard greens with wine in order to evoke the idea of familiarity, in the same way that you might serve fish (魚) to evoke the idea of plenty (餘)?

If so, this would be a uniquely Manchu custom, because the homonym only works in Manchu, not in Chinese. Perhaps what Jakdan has done here is to inject something characteristic of Manchu literati culture to amuse and entertain his audience.