Muffled Dialect Spoken by Green Fruits: An Alternative History of Modern Chinese Poetry
Xiaofei Tian
tlooto Summary
An article explores an alternative history of modern Chinese poetry through a poet's ocean voyage and his musings on language and communication.
Abstract
In early 1882, the poet Huang Zunxian (1848–1905), who was serving as assistant to the Chinese ambassador to Japan at the time, was appointed as Chinese consul general to the United States in San Francisco. Huang departed from Japan by sea on the eighteenth of the first month (March 3) and arrived at San Francisco on the twelfth of the second month (March 30). During the long ocean voyage, he composed a series of quatrains, collectively entitled “Various Responses on an Ocean Voyage” (Haixing zagan). As befitting someone traveling to a foreign land whose tongue he does not know, in no. 13 of the poetic series, Huang muses on the issue of language and communication:
Citation format
TIAN, Xiaofei. Muffled dialect spoken by green fruits: An alternative history of modern chinese poetry. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 2009.