Hild 10 Reading Response Week 8

Adrian Kong
HILD 10
11/15/2011
Tuesday 6

Reading Response Week 8

In the readings for this week, from Mair entries 54-59, the various author’s wrote poems to describe the life in Song China. These poets shared their stories by using beautiful imagery to describe it for them. Stories that describe the noise of rats to the paintings of bamboo, the writings of the Song poets conveyed the outlook of the Song Dynasty. Although these poems served as an art for entertainment, the poems, in a deeper way, addressed the thoughts and views of the culture in the Song. In a particular selection, in Mair 54, the story about the noise of rats wakes the author, Mei Yao Chen, up. Rather a short poem, Mei says in the middle of the poem, “Clatter-crash! – the end of my dream. I fret – will they knock off the inkslab on the desk? Worry – are they gnawing those shelves of books?” This poem, in general, displays very basic ordinary verses that describe the life that he lived in. From this poem, I can only infer that Mao was stressed that his life wasn’t going the way he wanted it to. He was afraid that the rats would steal his things and was paranoid about it. Mao also talks about his son and how he has come up with a poor solution to get the rats to leave. However, it seems as though Mao is only telling the readers this because he wants to show how much he loves his son by addressing his silliness In selection 56, the author Su Shih talks about YuKo and his paintings of bamboo. This story talks about how YuKo has lost himself in his job as a painter. “So rapt he forgot even himself – he himself became bamboo, putting out fresh growth endlessly.” What this shows us is how YuKo was man who really enjoyed painting, but his passion for it made him lose himself. This selection also goes on to talk about Chuang Tzu, famous philosopher from the Warring States period, and how he is no longer present. Could this show a relation to YuKo and how he was lost because of Chuang Tzu? In the “Lament of the Farm Wife of Wu”, by Su Shih, rice has ripened late and the field is flooded by the never ending rain. Finally, they are able to yield the crops, but are only able to sell it for cheap. The ox is sold to pay off the taxes and the never ending cycle continues. What this story shows is the hardships for the life of a farmer in those days. They are unable to get out of this life because they are never able to pay off money due from before. This particular story describes the thoughts of a farmer who clearly hates his life. Altogether, these stories have a common focus: they describe the life in the Song time period. The selections I have focused on in my response all seem to show the troubles and difficulties that people faced.