The original text and translation of Qixi Luoyin are as follows:

Original text: Qixi Festival, Song Dynasty: Yang Pu

If you don’t know what the morning glory means, you must invite the Weaver Girl to play with the golden shuttle . I beg for cleverness in the world every year, but I don’t know that there are already many cleverness in the world.

Translation:

I don’t know what the purpose of the morning cow is, so I must invite the Weaver Girl to play with the golden shuttle. I don’t know what the Cowherd’s intention was, why he had to invite fairies from the sky to weave beautiful clouds all over the sky. I beg for cleverness in the world every year, but I don’t know that there are already many cleverness in the world.

Every year on the night of July 7th, people pray to the Weaver Girl in the sky for wisdom and wisdom in embroidery, textiles, etc. But in fact, there is already a lot of wisdom in the world.

Note:

I don’t know what the meaning of the cow is, so I must invite the Weaver Girl to play with the golden shuttle (suō). Morning glory: star name, in the west of the Milky Way, commonly known as Cowherd, Hegu, also known as Huang Gu. Probably in the shape of the three stars of Li Niu, which resembles the head and horns of an ox, it is named morning glory. Ruohe: How. Weaver Girl, in the east of the Milky Way, the four stars of Weaver Girl are like a spindle, so she is named Weaver Girl. Legend has it that the Weaver Girl was the daughter of the Emperor of Heaven, and she was also called Tiansun. She was good at weaving. Han Yu treated Tiansun to weave clouds and brocade clothes. Jinsuo: the good name of shuttle.

I beg for cleverness in the world every year, but I don’t know that there are already many cleverness in the world. "Nian Nian" sentence: Because the Weaver Girl can weave, ancient women would burn incense and harvest fruits on Qixi Festival to congratulate her on the reunion of her husband and wife, and also beg her for wisdom. There is a folk drama of piercing a seven-hole needle. Beg and give. Bu Dao: I didn’t get it.

Appreciation:

Tang poetry focuses on emotion, while Song poetry focuses on theory. For those who like Tang poetry, this kind of poetry written by the Song Dynasty often feels like trivial matter. But if a poem can use simple sentences to express a philosophy profoundly, it cannot but be said that it has its own special interest. Yang Pu's "Qixi" is a philosophical poem with this kind of wit.

The author of the poem started from the myth and legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meeting on the Magpie Bridge on the Chinese Valentine's Day, and created a new style to express the author's unique and profound insights. "What do you think of the cowherd before you know it? You must invite the Weaver Girl to weave the golden shuttle." The first two sentences pose a question: I don't know what the Cowherd's idea is and what he thinks. He has to invite the fairies in the sky to weave the beautiful clouds all over the sky. . The word "Xu" here is a kind of doubt and denial. From a positive interpretation, there is no need to invite Weaver Girl to do all this.

These two sentences come very strangely and unexpectedly, because many people accept the myth of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl as a wonderful story, and have never questioned the meaning contained in it. Thinking that gods are better than humans, the fairies in the sky are naturally much smarter than everything in the world. But the poet doubts this. The doubt in the first two sentences only relates to the mythical story itself, but it is enough to create suspense. These two sentences pave the way for the strange argument in the last couplet of the poem.