POETS Day! Li Bai, Ernest Fenollosa, and Ezra Pound

Ben Sears

Ben Sears is a writer and restaurant guy in Birmingham, Alabama. He lives quite happily across from a creek with his wife, two sons, and an obligatory dog. You can follow him on Twitter and read his blog, The Columbo Game.

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1 Response

  1. Brandon Berg
    Ignored
    says:

    “The long Kiang”

    This is the Yangtze River. In Mandarin it’s called Chángjiāng, where cháng (長) means long and jiāng (江) means river. For some reason, possibly related to regional dialects, ji was sometimes romanized as ki in the past, e.g. Beijing => Peking, Nanjiing => Nanking.

    So why’s it called the Yangtze river? As its other name suggests, it’s a very long river, and people in different areas gave it different names; Yangtze (揚子) is the name that stuck in English.

    Anyway, “long Kiang” is a mistranslation; the “long” is part of the river’s proper name, not just a descriptor.

    Also, “kojin” here (故人; gùrén in Mandarin) is a common noun meaning old friend; in the original Chinese title, he’s referred to by name as 孟浩然 (Mèng Hàorán), another famous poet. Kokakuro is 黃鶴樓 (Huánghèlóu), the Yellow Crane Tower. If you look it up in Wikipedia, you can find a more accurate translation.Report

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