"The sun rises in the east and rains in the west, but there is a clear sky when there is no clear sky" is from Two Songs of the Bamboo Branch Lyrics (I) by Liu Yuxi, a poet of the Tang Dynasty. The poem is as follows:
Two Songs of the Bamboo Branch
Tang Dynasty - Liu Yuxi
The willow is green and the river is horizontal, and I hear the sound of singing on the river.
The sun rises in the east and rains in the west.
Translation
The willows are green and the river is wide and flat, and I hear the voice of my lover treading on the river.
The sun rises in the east and rains in the west, saying that there is no sunshine but there is still sunshine.
Notes
(1) Bamboo Branch Lyrics: the name of a modern musical composition. It is also known as "Bamboo Branch". Originally a folk song in the eastern part of Sichuan, the Tang Dynasty poet Liu Yuxi created new words based on the folk song, mostly about the love of men and women and the Three Gorges, which was widely circulated. Later poets wrote about love and local customs under the title of "Bamboo Branch Lyrics". Its form is a seven-character stanza.
(2) Ching: harmonized with "love". Quan Tang Poetry: it is also written as "love".
(3) Chushui Bashan: Chushui: (1) the name of water. A milk water. That is, today's Shaanxi Province, Shang County, West Milk River. Chu water note, the water source out of the southwest of Shangluo County, Chu Mountain. In the past, the four Hao hidden in the Chu Mountain, that is, this mountain is also. The two sources of water in the four Hao Temple east, and east of the high Che Ling south, wing with the streams, north turn into the Dan Shui (Northern Wei Li Daoyuan "water Jingji - Dan Shui"). ② refers to the rivers and lakes of ancient Chu. Bashan: ① Daba Mountain. Bashan night rain rises in the autumn pool. ② general reference to the area of Ba Shu. Chu water Bashan: general reference to the mountains and waters of Sichuan and Chu.
(4) Baren: ① Cuban people. ② the name of an ancient song. "Yangchun" has no harmonizer, and "Ba Ren" is all under the section." Jin Zhang Xie's "Miscellaneous Poems" No. 5 tries to sing for "Ba Ren", and the harmonizers are thousands. This poem refers to the people of the state of Cuba.
(5) North Guest: the author refers to himself, saying that the guest has the feeling of homesickness.
(6) U纥（hé）那：the harmony of the pedal song. Liu Yuxi has another U纥那曲："the willow is green and the bamboo branches are infinite. When Zhou Lang looks back, he listens to the singing of U纥那声." The tune is the same but the words are different. I wish you ten million years of life and a long life as the master of the house. The green silk: ① green silk. (②) a metaphor for the green water microwave. ③Litchi name. The Sichuan people call lychee green. The poem refers to the interpretation has not been unified. All three interpretations are available, and they all make sense.
About the Work
Two Poems on Bamboo Branches (One of Them) is the first poem in a group of poems by Liu Yuxi, a writer of the Tang Dynasty. The poem is about the mood of a young girl who is immersed in her first love. She is in love with someone, but she does not yet know the attitude of the other person, so she is both hopeful and skeptical; she is both joyful and worried. The poet uses the tone of a young girl to successfully express this subtle and complex psychology.
Works Appreciation
This poem is a description of the love between a young man and a young woman. It describes the inner activities of a young girl in her first love when she hears her lover's song on a clear spring day when the willows are green and the river is as flat as a mirror.
The first line of the poem, "The willow is green and the river is level," describes the scene before the girl's eyes: the willow by the river is green and the water in the river is as flat as a mirror. This is a very beautiful environment. The spring willows described in this sentence are most likely to arouse people's feelings, so it naturally leads to the second sentence: "I heard Lang singing on the river". This line is a narrative, writing about the young girl's ups and downs when she hears her lover's song.
The last two lines, "The sun rises in the east and the rain falls in the west, and there is no clear sky but there is a clear sky", are two clever metaphors, using the technique of semantic puns. "Sunrise in the east" is "clear", "rain in the west" is "no clear". The words "sunny" and "love" are harmonized, "sunny" and "no sunny" are "love" and "no love". "without love" is a cryptic expression for "with love" and "without love". The phrase "sunrise on the east side and rain on the west side" is apparently an illustration of "sunny" and "no sunny", but in fact it is a cryptic expression of "sentient" and "unemotional". but in fact it is a metaphor for "love" and "no love". This makes this young girl listen, really feel elusive, the mood of apprehension. But she is a clever woman, she recognized from the last sentence that her lover is affectionate towards her, because the words "have" and "have not" in the sentence emphasize "have". Therefore, she can't help but feel joyful in her heart. This sentence uses the technique of semantic puns to write about the rainy weather on the river, and also skillfully depicts a series of psychological activities of this young girl's confusion, attachment and hope.
This kind of expression, based on the characteristics of Chinese phonetics, has been customary in folk love songs through the ages. They are harmonic puns as well as vivid metaphors based on active associations. They are often taken from the scenery that is habitually seen in front of the eyes, and express subtle feelings explicitly but implicitly. For example, some of the Wu songs of the Southern Dynasty used such harmonic puns to express love. This kind of folk love songs with harmonic puns to express their feelings have a long history and have been loved by the people since then. Writers occasionally imitated them, and they became novel and attractive. This is one of the reasons why Liu Yuxi's poem is so popular among readers.
Background
Liu Yuxi served as an assassin in Kui Prefecture from the first month of the second year of Changqing of Emperor Mu Zong of the Tang Dynasty (822) to the summer of the fourth year of Changqing (824). He loved the folk song "Bamboo Branch Lyrics" so much that he filled in the lyrics according to the tune and wrote eleven songs, divided into two groups, this is one of the groups of two songs, written after "Nine Songs of Bamboo Branch Lyrics". May be the poet before the completion of the group of nine, and re-creation completed, and do not want to add ten, eleven after the first nine of the title, so it is also entitled "Bamboo Branch Lyrics, two".
About the Author
Liu Yuxi (772 ~ 842), the word Mengde, originating from Luoyang, Henan Province (see the catalog of origin disputes), was born in Xingyang, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, whose ancestor was Liu Sheng, the King of Jing of Zhongshan (said to be a descendant of Xiongnu), and who was a minister, writer, and philosopher in the Tang Dynasty, and was known as the "Poetic Hero". He was a minister of the Tang Dynasty, a literary scholar and philosopher, and was known as "Poetry Hero".
Liu Yuxi was a great poet and writer, covering a wide range of subjects, and was known as "Liu Liu" together with Liu Zongyuan, and "Three Masters" together with Wei Yingwu and Bai Juyi, and "Liu Bai" together with Bai Juyi. He left behind such famous works as "Inscription on a Private Room", "The Lyrics of the Bamboo Branch", "The Lyrics of the Willow Branch", and "Wuyi Lane". His philosophical works, Three Essays on Heaven, discussed the materiality of heaven and analyzed the roots of the "doctrine of heavenly destiny", with materialistic ideas. He is the author of Liu Mengde's Collected Writings and Liu Binke's Collected Writings.