September 9th is the Double Ninth Festival in China
Wang Wei's "Remembering Shandong Brothers on September 9th"
Being a stranger in a foreign land, every time I miss my loved ones even more during the festive season.
I know from a distance where my brothers have climbed to a high place[1], and there is one less person planted with dogwood trees[2].
Appreciation
Wang Wei is a precocious poet, "he is still young, and his articles are famous." He began to compose poems at the age of fifteen, and before the age of twenty he wrote such masterpieces as "A Daughter's Journey to Luoyang" and "A Journey to the Taoyuan". This song "Remembering the Shandong Brothers on September 9th" was composed by him when he was seventeen years old. It immediately became a popular masterpiece and was widely recited by people. There are five brothers, Wang Wei. He is the eldest and he has two younger sisters. When he wrote this poem, he left his hometown for the first time. The poem expresses his deep affection for missing his relatives.
The poem begins with a direct expression of homesickness. "Alone in a Foreign Land" alludes to a lonely environment. For teenagers who have left home for the first time, they are particularly sensitive to this environment. "Stranger" emphasizes the strange and cold feeling of a wanderer in a foreign land without any friends. Combining the word "du" and two "different" characters in a poem greatly deepens the subjective feeling. The second sentence "Missing relatives even more during festive seasons" is a reasonable development of the previous emotion, which shows that we already suffer from missing relatives in ordinary times, but during festivals, this longing becomes deeper and stronger. The word "time" is used extremely well, it is the key to connecting the emotions of the previous and following sentences. These two sentences constitute a level of the whole poem, expressing the love for family from the subjective feelings of the lyrical protagonist.
Shen Deqian of the Qing Dynasty believed that the last two lines of the poem "are the poetic meaning of Zhi'an" (Volume 19 of "Collection of Tang Poems"). Indeed, the two are quite similar in their expression methods. The last chapter of "The Book of Songs·Wei Feng·Zhi'an" says: "I'm looking at my brother from a high hill. The elder brother sighs for the younger brother to do the work day and night, and we will stay together all night long." Dream about your loved ones, and then ask your loved ones to miss you too. Wang Wei also used this method of expression in his poems, using "remote knowledge" to make a sudden change in the development of poetry, and to deepen the expression of the love between the two places from the perspective of relatives. "I know from a distance" that the following are all imaginary. I imagine that when the Double Ninth Festival comes, relatives will climb up to drink like in previous years. This closely ties into the title of the poem and also clarifies the specific meaning of the "festival" mentioned in the second sentence. The author predicts that when relatives reunite to celebrate the Double Ninth Festival and "plant dogwood trees everywhere", they will remember him as a wanderer in a foreign land. The conclusion pushes the emotion of the whole poem to a climax. It no longer expresses the longing for relatives, but the feelings are self-evident, leaving room for imagination.
Wang Wei's poems are characterized by meticulous wording, natural composition, and harmonious tone, which are already slightly revealed in this short work of his. Zhu Xi of the Song Dynasty said: "The ancients had a line in their poems, but today's poems have no lines at all. They just keep saying it. It is possible to write hundreds of poems like this in a day" (Volume 8 of "Zhu Zi's Collection of Languages"). Although his opinion of disdain for Song poetry is biased, his appreciation of "there are lines in ancient poems" is still justified. The so-called sentence in a poem means that the whole poem is a whole, and the best sentences in it have unique meaning and can be circulated independently. This little poem by Wang Wei belongs to one of the poems. The first two sentences of it have become a universal summary of people's feelings of missing their relatives in people's recitation. Therefore, whenever people miss their loved ones during festivals, they naturally recite these two lines of poetry.
[1] Climbing high: It is said that Huan Jing, a native of Jin Dynasty, learned Taoism from the immortal Fei Changfang, who said to him: "On September 9th, there will be a disaster in your family. You should go away quickly and let your family members go home." Make a crimson pouch, fill it with dogwood and tie it to your arm, climb to a high place and drink chrysanthemum wine, this misfortune can be eliminated." Huan Jing followed the instructions and climbed up, and the disaster was indeed avoided. Later, it became a custom to climb the mountain in nine days.
[2] Cornus officinalis (yuyu): a Yuejiao, also known as Wuyu, an aromatic plant. The ancients regarded September 9 as the ninth day, also called the Double Ninth Festival. At this time, the fruit of Cornus officinalis has a strong smell and is as red as a pepper. It is said that if you break it and stick it on your head, it can avoid evil smells and cold.