ChineseStudy

1. Yan Shan Ting · Seeing Apricot Blossoms on the Northern Journey (Zhao Ji)

Contents

Text

English translation

The blossoms seem cut from fine white silk, lightly layered and brushed with rouge. Their fresh adornment, brilliant color, and mingled fragrance would make even the maidens of the jeweled fairy palace feel outshone. Yet they fade so easily, all the more in merciless wind and rain. The speaker turns from the flower to a desolate courtyard and asks how many more spring twilights it must endure.

To whom can I entrust this weight of parting grief? These two swallows could hardly understand human speech. With sky and earth so vast, with rivers and mountains between us, how could I know where the palace of home now lies? How could I keep from longing for it? Only in dreams have I sometimes returned—but even that offers no certainty. Lately, even the dreams have ceased.

词句注释 · Notes

上阕 · First stanza

“冰绡”是洁白轻薄的丝织品，用来比喻花瓣；“燕脂”即胭脂。“靓妆”形容妆饰鲜明美好，“蕊珠宫女”指仙宫中的女子。“易得凋零”既写杏花，也为下阕的离恨与身世之感蓄势。

“Ice silk” is fine white silk, a metaphor for the petals; “燕脂” means rouge. “靓妆” describes brilliant adornment, and the maidens of the Rui-zhu Palace are celestial women. The flower’s vulnerability prepares the turn toward separation and personal loss in the second stanza.

下阕 · Second stanza

“者”在这里是“这”；“凭寄”是托付传递。“故宫”指故国旧日宫阙，具体所指不必坐实为某一处宫殿。“除梦里、有时曾去”仍留有梦中归去的可能，结尾却说近来连梦也没有了，情绪由寄望转向无着。

“者” means “these” here, while “凭寄” means to entrust something for delivery. “故宫” evokes the palace of the lost homeland; it need not be reduced to one specific building. The speaker once had the possibility of returning in dreams, but the final lines withdraw even that fragile consolation.

Feedback