Today is 清明節 the Qingming Festival, also known as the Pure Brightness Festival or, more to my taste, Tomb-Sweeping Day. Celebrated in China and overseas Chinese communities, it's a day to remember one's ancestors, clean their graves, and make offerings to them. To mark the occasion, here's my translation of one of the poems from the Song Dynasty poet 歐陽脩 Ouyang Xiu's "West Lake is Good" (西湖好) series. There's no precise title for this poem, by the way, so as usual the first line provides the name by which it's usually known. Ouyang, by the way, is one of a very few two-character 姓 xing, or family names.
Enjoy, folks, and burn some incense for your departed loved ones.
微臣
史大偉
***
清明上已西湖好
歐陽脩
清明上已西湖好
滿目繁華
爭道誰家
綠柳朱輪走鈿車
游人日暮相將去
醒醉喧嘩
路轉堤斜
直到城頭總是花
"On the Pure Brightness Festival"
Ouyang Xiu
During the Pure Brightness Festival, West Lake is good
Bountiful flowers fill one's eyes
Who would bother to speak?
Green willows and red wheels of ornamented carriages, fleeting
At sunset visitors see each other off
Sober or drunk, they make a racket
The road veers off, the dike is uneven
All the way to the city, flowers everywhere
Monday, April 04, 2016
Friday, April 01, 2016
Miscellanea
I'm not pleased that it's been a month since I last posted, and the posts I have in the works are, well, still in the works, so here are some links and such, just like a traditional weblog might offer.
-Carpenter Brut is one of my favorite musical acts as of late, and always makes good videos. Turbo Killer is great example of why that is. Foxy dames made even more so by the glowing inverted crosses on their foreheads, weird dudes sporting gas masks or shotguns, sweet cars, cruciform spacecraft, and a general air of glorious trashiness- if that ain't good viewing, I don't know what is. Carpenter Brut's other videos are worth your time, too.
-I missed 2016's annual literary festival in Macau, the Rota das Letras, but reading about it online introduced me to the poet Matilde Campilho. A native of Portugal who spent a few years in Brazil and as a result has acquired, from what I can tell from some of the interviews with her I've listened to, a Carioca accent when she needs it, I've found myself intrigued by her work. As someone who's studied Portuguese with teachers from Brazil and Portugal, I've tried to find the sweet spot between the two accents (which, like English, are really groups of numerous regional accents), so it's cool to actually hear a native speaker of Portuguese do the same and do a good job of it.
-If you're interested in leftist politics (the real kind, not those of the Democratic party here in the States), Jacobin magazine is an accessible start. The graphic design is eye-catching as hell, too. There's also Salvage, edited by China Mieville (among others). Unsurprisingly, it's a denser read, but no less rewarding for it. "Bleak is the new red."
-This may be the last night of the year we can have a fire or turn on the heat here in Houston. (Observation; no hyperlink provided.)
-If Internet history and pre-WWW protocols (which, alas, I mostly missed upon my initial visits to the World Wide Web back in '96 or so, but which I utilize now) are your thing, make sure your browser is gopher-capable and visit Floodgap's gopher server, which serves as a clearing-house of modern gopher activity.
And on that note, I'm out. This corpse is tired. Boa noite, amigos: I'm gonna listen to Carbon Based Lifeforms' "Photosynthesis", reminisce about my buddy Pete's first post-college digs up in Dallas and the gloriously pre-2001 tech crash nature thereof, and call it a night.
It feels good to just write shit again. I need to do it more often.
-Carpenter Brut is one of my favorite musical acts as of late, and always makes good videos. Turbo Killer is great example of why that is. Foxy dames made even more so by the glowing inverted crosses on their foreheads, weird dudes sporting gas masks or shotguns, sweet cars, cruciform spacecraft, and a general air of glorious trashiness- if that ain't good viewing, I don't know what is. Carpenter Brut's other videos are worth your time, too.
-I missed 2016's annual literary festival in Macau, the Rota das Letras, but reading about it online introduced me to the poet Matilde Campilho. A native of Portugal who spent a few years in Brazil and as a result has acquired, from what I can tell from some of the interviews with her I've listened to, a Carioca accent when she needs it, I've found myself intrigued by her work. As someone who's studied Portuguese with teachers from Brazil and Portugal, I've tried to find the sweet spot between the two accents (which, like English, are really groups of numerous regional accents), so it's cool to actually hear a native speaker of Portuguese do the same and do a good job of it.
-If you're interested in leftist politics (the real kind, not those of the Democratic party here in the States), Jacobin magazine is an accessible start. The graphic design is eye-catching as hell, too. There's also Salvage, edited by China Mieville (among others). Unsurprisingly, it's a denser read, but no less rewarding for it. "Bleak is the new red."
-This may be the last night of the year we can have a fire or turn on the heat here in Houston. (Observation; no hyperlink provided.)
-If Internet history and pre-WWW protocols (which, alas, I mostly missed upon my initial visits to the World Wide Web back in '96 or so, but which I utilize now) are your thing, make sure your browser is gopher-capable and visit Floodgap's gopher server, which serves as a clearing-house of modern gopher activity.
And on that note, I'm out. This corpse is tired. Boa noite, amigos: I'm gonna listen to Carbon Based Lifeforms' "Photosynthesis", reminisce about my buddy Pete's first post-college digs up in Dallas and the gloriously pre-2001 tech crash nature thereof, and call it a night.
It feels good to just write shit again. I need to do it more often.
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