At the same time in China, the Tang Dynasty’s “golden age” of poetry was in full swing. The Chinese Sage in this poem is obviously a person who loves to write poems as he is described to be “most poet or most philosopher”. Thus, one can speculate that The Chinese Sage in the poem may then refer to Li Bai, one of China’s greatest poets who lived from 701-762. The Tang Dynasty’s focus on perfecting one’s skills in the composition of poetry soon became a necessary study for those hoping to pass imperial exams. Poetry then evolved into a highly competitive activity and contests became common among guests at banquets or other social gatherings. Like other upper-class scholars, the Chinese Sage is highly educated and knows a wide range of words. However, in order to stand out from the crowd, he seeks an innovative idea and so he deliberately goes to a peasant woman and uses her to help him redraft his poem, making it one that can be read even by the lower-class society. The woman may likely be a farmer due to her “rough-voice” (5) and the descriptions of “hay” (18) and “crude meals” (19) as well as the fact that 80 to 90 per cent of the population at that time lived in rural and agrarian places because the taxes were quite high. If the Chinese Sage could make a poem that can be read throughout the society, he at least has tried to make a connection between the societies, so that others may want to follow his lead.
Similar to European nobles, Chinese upper-class society enjoyed the luxuries brought by international trade and were exposed to the arts through the Silk Road. Although the Tang Dynasty focus was on writing perfect poems to show off to others, many lower- class people “had no dealings…with poetry, art of any kind,” (12-13) demonstrating the large gap between the two classes. The poet wants to prove that although the European and Chinese culture may have never encountered one another, they faced the same problems in which there is always a lower-class while others enjoy the luxuries of the upper-class.
The deeper meaning of this poem can be explored by examining the language used in the poem as well as some historical background. The poem was written in 1975 during the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution in China was aimed to remove the four olds: old customs, old cultures, old habits and old ideas. Those who held positions of authority such as teachers or scholars were beaten and many literate secondary students were sent to the countryside to be reeducated through hard labor. The wealth gap between the country and the city was dramatically widened by Mao’s campaign, strikingly similar to the “reign of Charlemagne” (22) and the Tang dynasty a few thousand years ago. Here, the poet explores the observation that the passage of time has little if no significant impact on society as history has a tendency to repeat itself. If humans do not learn from history or even try to be ignorant of it, they will nonetheless repeat the same mistakes again. Moreover, the poet has used irony in establishing the slight difference over time between the two classes. The lower-class was mocked at for being illiterate in the past but during the Cultural Revolution, the upper-class was abused for being literate and holding authority. It seems as though the lower-class are taking revenge on the upper-class, showing us that both classes are just as mediocre as the other.
The structure of the poem further reflects the broken parts of society which separate the rich from the poor. Each of the lines has a different amount of spacing which represents those that are wealthy and those that have been left behind and sometimes even forgotten. Dropped words at the end of the lines give the poem a sense of incompleteness as it looks like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle, marking the scattered arrangement of wealth throughout society in both The East and The West. Also, the dropped words like “woman” (4) and “word that was foreign to” (10), serve as somewhat of a summary of the major themes of the poem as they stand out from the rest of the lines. A peasant woman has been chosen specifically by the Chinese Sage because women tend to be more elaborate and gentle. Thought she may be a farmer, she would nonetheless have the patience to detect all of the “words that [are] foreign to her” (10). In contrast, a wealthy woman would not be able to achieve the same effect as she may know all of the characters. Every society has its own definition of the rich and the poor but in the end, we, like the Chinese Sage, inevitably go to the poor to help solve “obscurities” (15).
In conclusion, the poet has effectively used contrast, language and structure to mark the differences between high and low-class societies around the world. Though the poem may reflect to a past time, the same things can be seen in the present society. The rich and the poor can be spotted today by new terms such as “third world” and “developed”. History serves as a reminder to us that we need to rely on the peasants no matter how hard we try to avoid and ignore them. Essentially, we all have nothing and when things become too complicated, it is sometimes best to simply go back and live a peasant life, living happily and peacefully.
