In Chinese, there are two words for "queen", 王后 and 女王; the first, when broken up into separate words, means "behind the king", and the second is "woman king".

This entry was originally posted at http://the-grynne.dreamwidth.org/927574.html and has
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from RHYMEPROSE ON LITERATURELiterature is the embodiment of our thoughts ( Read more... )

From monanotlisa: When you see this, post a poem on your journal.

SONG AT YEAR'S END

The year ends thus: northern winds, white snow
shrouding Tung-t'ing Lake and all Hsiao and Hsiang.

Under cold skies, as fishermen tend frozen nets, Mo-yao
tribesmen shoot geese. Their mulberry bows go twangBut Ch'u people like fish, not birds. Let the geese ( Read more... )

There's a lot in Hans-Georg Moeller's The Philosophy of the Daodejing that I take issue with. His insistent on the Laozi as (mainly) an elitist manual of male statesmanship, for one thing - completely disregarding his prior comment that the written version that has been passed down to us virtually unchanged over the last 2000 years, very likely had ( Read more... )

from the Book of Songs

WHEN THE GOURD HAS DRIED LEAVESWhen the gourd has dried leaves ( Read more... )

from the Book of Songs (Shi Jing)

WHITE MOONRISEThe white rising moon ( Read more... )

Chinese, my mother tongue until I was about 8 years old, has a writing system that is so fundamentally different from every other major language of the world (even Japanese, it's nearest linguistic relative), I'm always intrigued by Western authors' attempts, even when seriously misguided, to describe those differences in the which seem completely ( Read more... )

Excerpt from Jerome P. Seaton's introduction to The Shambhala Anthology of Chinese Poetry. It's fascinating for literature/poetry enthusiasts, non-readers of Chinese, and maybe the odd Firefly fanfic writer; I say this, being technically all three myself. *g*

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All Western languages are written using one or another form of alphabet: letters used ( Read more... )