THE BACK COURTYARD FLOWER

It bothered me all evening. There were three words I could not remember. Everything else was crystal clear, but those three my mind would not let me reconstruct. For two of them, even the pronunciation escaped.

"Something gong something cheung hau ting faa."

Across the river she still sings the 'back courtyard flower'. The writer of that plangent line was Du Mu, fleeing the destruction in the capitol during the middle of the Tang dynasty period. Chinese capitols have often been sacked by the barbarians -- the Western forces in Peking in 1900 are a good example -- but this was most likely part of factional fighting between the eunuchs and the scholar-officials.


THE SWEET DEW INCIDENT
Gān​lù​ zhī​ biàn​ 甘露之變 ('gam lou ji pin')

In the eighth year of emperor Wenzong (唐文宗) several high-placed officials conspired to lessen the deleterous influence of the castrati at court. To that end, they assembled troops in secret, albeit with the complicity of the emperor himself, who was heartily sick and tired of the robbery and corruption of the palace roaches.
The plot went awry, and the no-testicle clique took revenge.
The families of the conspirators were wiped out.
Thousands died. And the empire stumbled.

All in all, very similar to American politics, except for the heads on spikes and the slaughter of innocents.

You can read about it on Wikipedia: GAN LU.


Du Mu (杜牧 'dou muk'), who was thirty two years old at the time, was on his way to a posting at Luo Yang (洛陽 'lok yeung') when matters came to a head. Having left Chang'an (長安 'cheung on') several months previously, he was not implicated, but undoubtedly many of his colleagues were, and he would have been consumed with increasing despair as more came out of the persecution and slaughter. Particularly painful must have been the death of friends in the purge.

While on the road, he penned a poem. There is a note of defiant despondency in his lines.


NIGHT MOORING AT QIN HUAI
Hù​ Qín​huái​ 滬秦淮 ('wu chuenwaai')

The moon embraces the cold water, the smoke enfolds the sand, I've tied up my boat for the night near a wine shop. Across the water a singing girl does not know the sorrow of a destroyed nation, she still gaily sings the song of the back courtyard flower.

Yue lung hon seui yin lung saa, ye bok chuen waai kan jau kaa,
seung nui pat ji mong kwok han, gaak gong yau cheung hau ting faa.

月籠寒水煙籠沙, 夜泊秦淮近酒家,
商女不知亡國恨, 隔江猶唱後庭花。

[Literal translation: moon basket cold water smoke basket sand, night moor Qin Huai near wine family; commercial woman not know lost country sad, across river yet sing rear court flower.]

No, the term mercantile female does not necessarily imply a working girl; she could just be the daughter of a nearby family employed to cheer up patrons with her dulcet voice. The use of 'basket' (籠 'lung') as a verb to indicate 'embrace, enfold, contain' is not particularly a stretch, though not common then, and somewhat unknown now. The word for 'across' (隔 'gaak') entirely escaped me, as did the word for 'yet' (猶 'yau'), although both of these characters are fairly common.
Something river, something sing.
It was a mental blip.


Now, if you were to ask me about the song Back Courtyard Flower (後庭花 'hau ting faa'), I will draw a complete blank. But so would everyone else. The song has not come down to us, merely the title. It was a popular ditty, gay and cheerful, and considering the horrifying events at the time, highly inappropriate.

I rather wish the song had survived.
It must have been a goody.



I was enjoying some pastry and two cups of HongKong-style milk-tea at a bakery in Chinatown yesterday evening, when the word 秦 (Qín​; 'chuen') sparked the memory train. It's the name of the Qin Dynasty (秦朝 'chuen chiu', 221 bce–206 bce), whom I mentioned briefly in yesterday's post, but it's also toponymic. The Qin and Huai rivers join near the southern capitol (南京 Nanjing; 'naam king'), and there are Qin mountains (秦嶺 Qinling; 'chuen leng') in the province west of the passes (陝西 Shaanxi; 'sim sai'). The character originally meant millet. Two hands grasp a stalk (禾).
I had made mention of the tyrant of Qin as successor to Zhou.
Merely in passing, as I waffled about other things.
But the name, initially, had escaped me.

In remembering the character, Du Fu's poem also came back.
Well, except for the something river something sings line.


For the next several hours I could not get the verse with holes out of my head. I was smoking my pipe, you see, and therefore nowhere near my bookshelves or the internet and couldn't look it up.



Really, most businesses would do well to have dictionaries and reference books on hand for their patrons. The world would be a far better place if they did.



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