"Being a stranger alone in a foreign land, I miss my relatives twice during the festive season" comes from the first sentence or two of the ancient poem "I miss my Shandong brothers on a holiday in a mountain" written by the Tang poet Wang Wei.
The full text is as follows:
Vacation in the mountains reminds me of my brothers in Shandong.
Wang Wei
I am a lonely stranger in a strange land, and I miss my family more often during the holidays.
When I think of my brothers' bodies climbing high, I will feel a little regret for not being able to reach me.
This poem is one of Wang Wei's representative works.
Translation:
As a stranger in a foreign land, I wander alone and miss my relatives every holiday. My relatives in my hometown are climbing mountains today, and I disappeared when I was planting dogwood all over the place alone.
Text note:
September 9: Double Ninth Festival. In ancient times, nine was the number of yang, so it was called Chongyang.
Memory: nostalgia.
Shandong: Wang Weiqian moved to Puxian (now yongji city, Shanxi), east of Hanguguan and Huashan, so it was called Shandong.
Foreign land: foreign land, foreign land.
Become a stranger: become a guest of another country.
Festival: a beautiful festival.
Mountain climbing: There is an ancient custom of mountain climbing on the Double Ninth Festival.
Appreciate:
Wang Wei's poem "Thinking of Shandong Brothers in the Mountain" is included in The Whole Tang Poetry, Volume 128. The following is the appreciation of this poem by Mr. Liu, the executive director of the Tang Dynasty Literature Research Association.
Wang Wei is a precocious writer. He wrote many excellent poems when he was young. This poem was written when he was seventeen. Different from his later landscape poems, which are rich in painting and exquisite in composition and color, this lyric poem is very simple. But for thousands of years, people read this poem when they left their hometown, but they strongly felt its power. This power comes from its simplicity, profundity and high generalization.
I wrote this poem because I missed my relatives in my hometown on the Double Ninth Festival. Wang Wei lives in Zhou Pu, east of Huashan Mountain, so it's called Remembering Shandong Brothers. When he wrote this poem, he was probably seeking fame in Chang 'an. Although the bustling imperial capital was very attractive to young literati who were keen on official career at that time, it was a "foreign land" for a young wanderer after all. The more bustling and lively, the more lonely and helpless the wanderer is in the vast sea of people.
Creation background
This poem was written by Wang Wei when he was seventeen. Wang Wei was wandering between Luoyang and Chang 'an alone. He is from Zhou Pu (now Yongji, Shaanxi Province), and Zhou Pu is in the east of Huashan Mountain, so he called his hometown brothers Shandong brothers.
About the author:
Wang Wei (70 1 year -76 1 year, 699 -76 1 year), whose real name was Ji Jie, was named the magic pony. Han nationality, a native of Hedong, Zhou Pu (now Yuncheng, Shanxi) and Qixian, Shanxi, was a poet in the Tang Dynasty and was known as the "Shi Fo". Su Shi commented: "Poetry is full of paintings; Look at the picture. There are poems in it.