Drum Tower: Startle the heart

“Spring Landscape”, a poem written over 1,000 years ago, remains one of China’s most celebrated literary works. Composed by the 8th Century Tang dynasty poet Du Fu, it is still memorised by every schoolchild in the country. Why is the poem still so resonant today? 

The Economist’s Beijing bureau chief, David Rennie, and senior China correspondent, Alice Su, consider whether the ambiguity of classical Chinese makes it ideal for poetry. Our deputy editor Edward Carr explores how close he can get to the poem in translation. Nicolas Chapuis, a former ambassador to China who is translating Du Fu’s complete works into French, examines the meaning of one particular couplet of the poem. And Eileen Chengyin Chow of Duke University takes us outside China’s poetry canon. 

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