From "Eighteen Beats of Hujia" by Cai Wenji of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Meaning: I made the eighth beat of the Hujia, hoping to relieve my sorrow. Unexpectedly, after making it, I felt even more miserable.
Excerpt from the original text:
If God has eyes, why not see me drifting alone? If God has a spirit, why should I be so far away from home? I don't live up to the sky. How can the sky be worthy of me? If I don't live up to God's will, why will God punish me by crossing the barren state? I made eight beats here to relieve my worries, but I didn't know that when the song was completed, my heart turned to worry.
Translation:
If God has eyes, why can’t he see me wandering alone? If the gods are really effective, why do they leave me miserable and lonely all over the world? I have never let God down, so why would I be matched with a husband from a foreign race? I have never failed. Why did God punish me to be reduced to a deserted state? I made the eighth beat of Hujia, hoping to relieve my sorrow. Unexpectedly, after I made it, I felt even more miserable.
Extended information
Creative background
At the end of the Han Dynasty, there was chaos and years of war. Cai Wenji was captured by the Huns while fleeing and lived outside the Great Wall. Later, she married King Zuo Xian. , gave birth to two children. She spent twelve years outside the Great Wall, but she missed her hometown all the time.
Cao Cao pacified the Central Plains, reconciled with the Huns, and sent envoys to redeem Wenji with a large sum of money. She had to leave her two children. The joy of returning home was overwhelmed by the pain of parting from her flesh and blood, and she felt very conflicted. So she wrote the famous long poem "Eighteen Beats of Hujia", narrating the unfortunate experiences in her life.
"Eighteen Beats of Hujia" was first seen in Zhu Xi's "Collected Commentary on Songs of Chu·Postscript". It is a poem about ancient Yuefu music and music. One chapter is a beat, and there are eighteen chapters, so it has this name. The theme reflected is "Wen Ji returns to Han Dynasty".
The qin music includes versions of "Big Hu Jia", "Little Hu Jia", "Eighteen Beats of Hu Jia" and other qin songs. Although the tunes are different, they all reflect Cai Wenji's extremely contradictory and painful mood of missing her hometown but not being able to bear the separation of her flesh and blood. The music is euphemistic and sad, tearing the heart and intestines.
Influence on later generations
After the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, all Han people in China became slaves. Wang Yuanliang, a poet who was a survivor of the Southern Song Dynasty, played "Eighteen Beats of Hujia" for Wen Tianxiang who was in prison, expressing the "infinite sorrow" of the broken mountains and rivers. During this period, "Eighteen Beats of Hujia" quickly spread among the old officials and people of the former Southern Song Dynasty.
"Eighteen Beats of Hujia" is just a piece of piano music. Although it expresses sadness and resentment, it is also "a great resentment". After the fall of the Song Dynasty, perhaps it was the widely circulated "overwhelming sadness" and "awesome resentment" songs that enabled the "heart of stone" to persevere to the end, thus keeping the blood of race and culture intact. , continues. More than eighty years later, when the anti-Yuan war raged across the south and north of the Yangtze River, race and culture were finally reborn.
Baidu Encyclopedia--Eighteen Pats of Hujia