Friday, September 19, 2008

Chinese Poem

少小離家老大回,

鄉音無改鬢毛摧。

兒童相見不相識,

笑問客從何處來?

This is one of my all time favourite Chinese poems. I honestly do not know who is the poet, anyone know please do message me. It basically encapsulates what I sometimes feel when I go back to my home town and visit my high school. No one knows me anymore haha.

For the benefit of those who do not read Chinese characters the han yi pin yin translation is:

Shao xiao li jia lao da hui,
xiang yin wu gai ping mao chui,
er tong xiang jian pu xiang shi,
xiao wen ke chong her chu lai.

Not too sure whether the pin yin is correct or not, but at least I tried. This is the only poem whereby I can still recite from memory as well as read the characters. Lately I have found that Chinese poems are more beautiful and meaningful if compared to English ones.

Some of you might differ, but this is my personal opinion.

6 comments:

MHSGeometry said...

my book says He ZhiZhang wrote this great poem.

MHSGeometry said...

another that I love starts "pu tao mei jiu, yue guang bei"

Anonymous said...

Pinyin is wrong, everything that you put as the letter p is supposed to be b.

Anonymous said...

Shao xiao li jia lao da hui,
xiang yin wu gai bin mao shuai,
er tong xiang jian bu xiang shi,
xiao wen ke cong he chu lai.

happy to help :)

Anonymous said...

鄉音無改鬢毛摧

from what i remember, 摧, "cui", is the wrong character, it should be "shuai". i don't have the chinese character input on my comp, so i can't type it, but the character "shuai" means to turn white, especially referring to hair.

Anonymous said...

thanks for the shaui correction, and incredible Hanci to write ....i too hold this poem in high regard, self taught Mandarin enthusiast dabbling fr eight years. kllrchrd4.livejournal.com