So I have a character in a book who wants to write poetry, only she's a native Mandarin speaker who grew up from birth to 13 somewhere not far from Shanghai
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Another fundamental is the thousand word classic which has been used for centuries to teach chinese literacy. My own grandfather can still recite the whole thing from memory. There is also a lot of philosophy and history embedded in it. It serves as the equivalent as the alphabet song, but with meaning. https://www.chinasage.info/1000character-classic.htm
For literature, the big four are Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and Dreams of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone. These are all really long ....... and tend to be split into multiple volumes. I think all of these are written is some degree in vernacular chinese (how people speak mandarin ) in contrast to the poetry above which is literary chinese ( like how europe wrote everything in Latin during the middle ages despite no one speaking it except chinese people kept classical/literary chinese as a written language for most of chinese history and spread it to the koreans, japanese, vietnamese, etc. )
In the context of the character, it's not really realistic that she would deeply understand chinese literature or the underlying philosophies due to the policies of the cultural revolution, if she grew up near Shanghai. They would teach excerpts of the above in school, but the everyday person would not be able to read and understand the texts, similarly to how many english-speaking people cannot read Beowulf in old english. I also am not sure people would take her work seriously; if she writes for a modern audience it could become popular but is considered cheap and if she mimics the classical styles no one would be able to read it or would ever consider it comparable to the best work of the Tang and Song poets.
Tang poetry & Song verses are considered to be the best.
Of the Tang poetry, Li Bai is a leading figure.
You can see the link with translations below.
http://www.chinese-poems.com/lb.html
Another fundamental is the thousand word classic which has been used for centuries to teach chinese literacy. My own grandfather can still recite the whole thing from memory. There is also a lot of philosophy and history embedded in it. It serves as the equivalent as the alphabet song, but with meaning.
https://www.chinasage.info/1000character-classic.htm
For literature, the big four are Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and Dreams of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone. These are all really long ....... and tend to be split into multiple volumes. I think all of these are written is some degree in vernacular chinese (how people speak mandarin ) in contrast to the poetry above which is literary chinese ( like how europe wrote everything in Latin during the middle ages despite no one speaking it except chinese people kept classical/literary chinese as a written language for most of chinese history and spread it to the koreans, japanese, vietnamese, etc. )
In the context of the character, it's not really realistic that she would deeply understand chinese literature or the underlying philosophies due to the policies of the cultural revolution, if she grew up near Shanghai. They would teach excerpts of the above in school, but the everyday person would not be able to read and understand the texts, similarly to how many english-speaking people cannot read Beowulf in old english. I also am not sure people would take her work seriously; if she writes for a modern audience it could become popular but is considered cheap and if she mimics the classical styles no one would be able to read it or would ever consider it comparable to the best work of the Tang and Song poets.
Good luck.
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