Thoughts on the Three Poems on Pitying the Peasants

Li Yousheng (April 2017)

I. Even in his seventies, he can still recite the three poems about sympathy for the peasants that he read in his childhood.

Around 1955, I learned the three poems titled “Sympathy for the Peasants” in my elementary school Chinese class, taught by teacher Zhao Xiuzhong. I haven’t encountered them since. Today, reading Mr. Li Youzheng’s recollections of his early student days stirred up many memories for me. Li Youzheng said he liked classical Chinese poetry. I can’t say I share that interest, but recalling my elementary and middle school Chinese classes, the poems I learned were mostly classical Chinese, with only occasional modern poems. Now, I remember the classical poems I studied, but I have no recollection of the modern poems.

Today, I suddenly remembered the three poems about sympathy for the peasants that I learned more than sixty years ago. Recalling them, I was surprised to find that I could recite them all from memory. This seems to be the first time in my life that I have been able to recite all three poems from memory. Later that evening, I searched online and learned that the authors were Li Shen of the Tang Dynasty and Zhang Yu of the Song Dynasty.

I find this to be truly a miracle: three short poems I learned in elementary school, which I had never encountered again since, were suddenly recalled more than sixty years later by some other reason, and I was able to recite them one by one in bed at night, which astonished me. That’s why I wrote this article to record it and provide material for future research by experts.

This is my initial explanation, which can only be considered a direct impression: childhood memory is strong, and ancient poems with extremely regular rhythms are easy to memorize, including the memory of oral muscle activity during recitation. It’s like riding a bicycle; when you sit on the seat, you automatically pedal. Similarly, someone who swam as a child, didn’t swim for decades afterward, and was amazed to find they could still swim in their seventies. This is precisely what I’ve emphasized for many years: the aesthetic order of primitive societies cannot be described in language, and therefore, life has many elements that are not expressed in language. [1, 2]

In my previous reading, at least some authors have suggested that classical Chinese poetry is easier to memorize. This is because the rhythmic cadence created by the tones and rhymes makes it easy to recite, and the added oral muscle activity makes it difficult to translate into linguistic memory.

But what I find most remarkable is that the author of the three poems on sympathizing with the peasants, using just a few words, sketched out the life circumstances of a rural farmer, evoking a resonance with basic human emotions. I personally lived in the countryside in my early years and later entered the intellectual class, and these three short poems are precisely works of intellectuals showing compassion for farmers. The human brain has a strong capacity for empathy; that is, when we see or think about the tragic circumstances of others, our own brains also experience a sense of being there.

II. Three Poems on Pitying the Farmers

1. Li Shen’s “Sympathy for the Peasants”

Hoeing the fields at midday, sweat drips onto the soil beneath the crops.

Who knows that every grain of rice on the plate is the result of hard work?

2. Li Shen’s “Sympathy for the Peasants”

Sow a single grain in spring, reap ten thousand grains in autumn.

There is no idle land under heaven, yet farmers still starve to death.

3. Zhang Yu, the silkworm farmer

I entered the city yesterday, and returned with tears streaming down my face.

Those adorned in silk robes are not the ones who raise silkworms.

I still remember my elementary school Chinese teacher, Zhao Xiuzhong, emphasizing that the last character “市” in “昨天入城市” means buying, selling, exchanging, and market, and should not be confused with the modern word “city”.

Third, the author of the three poems on sympathy for the peasants has a deep and insightful understanding of rural life, but he himself is not a peasant.

Neither of the two poets mentioned above were farmers, much less silkworm farmers. The lives of real farmers and silkworm farmers were irrelevant to the poets and likely not areas they had in-depth knowledge of. Nevertheless, the authors possessed a profound and insightful understanding of rural life, enabling them to sketch a rural life scenario in just a few words.

Li Shen’s second poem, “Sympathy for the Peasants,” expresses the actual situation of Chinese farmers. Having lived in the countryside for many years, as far as I know, among the so-called five grains in rural China, only millet has the smallest seeds, making it possible to “sow one grain of millet in spring and reap ten thousand grains in autumn.” Other grains, such as rice and wheat, might yield at most a thousand grains from a single seed. And later, corn might only produce a few hundred kernels per stalk.

How many readers today would know why Li Shen used millet as an example in these two lines of poetry, rather than any other grain crop? Probably very few.

For most readers, Li Shen’s two poems about pity for farmers convey the opposite idea: “Every grain is hard-earned” means that every grain of food is hard-won and permeated with the sweat of farmers, while “One grain of millet sown in spring yields ten thousand grains in autumn” implies that agricultural harvests are easy.

I spent many years in the countryside during my youth in the 1950s. Farming at that time still used traditional techniques, not much different from the era in which these two poets wrote their poems about the plight of farmers. Hoeing was for weeding and loosening the soil. Loosening the topsoil helped retain moisture, improved air circulation, and promoted bacterial growth, allowing organic matter to decompose into absorbable fertilizer. Hoeing was one of the most basic farm chores, far from the heaviest. Harvesting wheat in May, as Bai Juyi described below, was a rare example of heavy farm work. Sweating and dripping sweat while hoeing under the scorching sun was a common sight in farmers’ lives; no farmer would care. As for “Sow one grain of millet in spring, reap ten thousand grains in autumn,” it describes this natural phenomenon that occurs year after year.

In this light, the poet Li Shen used the most ordinary life phenomena of rural farmers to create a moving artistic conception that has been passed down through the ages through literary techniques such as comparison and association.

The poet Zhang Yu’s poem “The Silkworm Woman” depicts a silkworm woman going to the city to sell her silk and textiles, a very ordinary phenomenon. The fact that those dressed in silk do not raise silkworms is an inevitable consequence of a society with a division of labor. It is precisely through this common social phenomenon that the poet Zhang Yu created a moving emotional atmosphere and immortal verses.

As far as I know, people often use the first poem about pity for farmers to teach children to cherish food and not waste it. This poem explicitly tells people to cherish every grain of rice, every single grain in their bowl, because each grain is soaked with the sweat of the farmers. In reality, wasting one or two grains of rice or other food is an unavoidable phenomenon that occurs daily at the dinner table. According to statistics, in the United States and Canada, more than 40% of the various food items, including fruits and vegetables, purchased by households from grocery stores end up in the trash. This is at least one of the reasons for the mountains of garbage piling up in modern cities, and its disposal is one of the most troublesome problems for modern humanity.

Similarly, the class divisions and wealth inequality that humanity faces today are far greater than those in China during the Tang and Song dynasties. There are countless examples of silkworm-raising women whose lives are filled with tears. If they want to survive, they can only learn to accept the cruel reality.

“Sow a single grain of millet in spring, reap ten thousand grains in autumn. There is no idle land under heaven, yet farmers still starve to death.” Today, even if only a very small number of people act as farmers, the grain grown by one person can feed tens of thousands of people, but in today’s world, a small number of poor people still freeze and starve to death.

Fourth, the three poems on sympathy for the peasants represent a rare relaxed atmosphere in the lives of Chinese literati, but are not a true reflection of rural life in the era.

If novels like *Water Margin* depict the lives of displaced people or chivalrous heroes, and *Dream of the Red Chamber* portrays the lives of young children in aristocratic families, then novels that truly depict peasant life can only exist in modern China. The three poems on pity for the peasants here are far from depictions of rural life; rather, they are works of literary figures expressing compassion for the peasantry. From these three short poems, what I perceive first and foremost is the freedom of literary figures to express their own feelings, rather than the plight of the peasants.

Humans are collective animals, born with the ability to feel the situation of others. I once divided human society into the genetically encoded primitive society and the artificial secondary society. I found that the primitive society is the original society of humankind, which is the same as all animal societies. It is maintained by human nature to maintain its stability and function, and its social order is emotional and aesthetic. The modern artificial secondary society serves a certain purpose and is a product of rational thinking. Chinese civilization originated from the primitive society, while Western civilization has been a secondary society from the beginning. Confucianism and Taoism, as the mainstream cultures of China, both take the primitive society as their ideal. This has created the unique style of traditional Chinese poetry. Unlike Western poetry, Chinese poetry, starting from the Book of Songs, is the whispered conversation between literati, the self-expression, and has the integrative function of the psychological and emotional level of the primitive society. [3]

Therefore, the three poems on pity for the peasants express the emotions that literati wanted to share, and are an expression and exchange of compassion from scholars at the ruling class level for the peasants, who were in a vulnerable position. This was also a natural expression of emotion among government officials and intellectuals during the Tang and Song dynasties. It is also an expression of public social conscience; a society without such expression is abnormal.

Below, we will discuss these three poems expressing sympathy for farmers from the perspective of a secondary society, that is, a political perspective. These poems reflect the perspectives of public intellectuals from the Tang and Song dynasties, who, from the standpoint of a just society and the perspective of the disadvantaged peasant group, criticized the mainstream society they themselves belonged to. In today’s Western representative democracy, such criticism is commonplace, but it is rare in Chinese history.

Among the dynasties in Chinese history, only the Tang and Song dynasties, after the Qin and Han dynasties, were founded by a highly cultured aristocratic class. The Yuan and Qing dynasties originated from northern nomadic tribes, the Ming dynasty was founded by peasant uprisings, and the Sui dynasty was too short-lived. I myself lack expertise in classical literature, but I believe that the three poems about pity for the peasants in the first three poems in elementary school textbooks, from the Tang and Song dynasties, represent the powerful voice of the Tang and Song literati class and the rare relaxed atmosphere in the lives of Chinese literati.

Both the Ming and Qing dynasties were notorious for their literary inquisitions. The Yuan dynasty represented the southward expansion of the nomadic rule from the grasslands, while the Han dynasty, founded by peasants, was the first long-lasting dynasty in a newly established secondary society, and its literati class had a pioneering spirit. The Nineteen Ancient Poems from the late Eastern Han dynasty are considered by some scholars to be the hallmark of true literati poetry, indicating that prior to this, literati lacked an independent class consciousness.

“Sow a single grain of millet in spring, reap ten thousand grains in autumn. There is no idle land under heaven, yet farmers still starve to death.” An era that allows scholars to write such verses will not see many farmers starve to death. Rather, it is in eras that do not allow scholars to express their opinions in this way that large numbers of farmers are likely to starve to death.

V. Concluding Remarks

Finally, it’s necessary for us to read together Bai Juyi’s “Watching the Wheat Harvest”:

Farmers have few idle months; May is especially busy. Last night, a south wind rose, and the wheat fields turned golden. Women and mothers-in-law carried baskets of food, children carried jugs of water. They went together to the fields, where the able-bodied men were working on the southern hill. Their feet were steamed by the hot earth, their backs scorched by the blazing sun. Exhausted, they felt no heat, only regret that the summer days were too short.
There was also a poor woman, carrying her child on her back. Her right hand held gleaned ears of grain, her left arm carried a tattered basket. Listening to their conversation, one could not help but feel sorrow. The farmers had paid their taxes, and they gathered these scraps to fill their hungry bellies.

What merit have I gained, having never toiled in the fields? Yet I receive a salary of three hundred bushels of grain, with surplus at year’s end. Thinking of this, I feel ashamed, and cannot forget it all day.

Bai Juyi’s poem is the same poem about sympathizing with farmers, but it expresses the sentiments more meticulously and fully. Therefore, it can be used to fully represent the mood and thoughts of the three poems about sympathizing with farmers mentioned above, and it also has the finishing touch effect: Thinking of this, I feel ashamed and cannot forget it all day long.

I lived in a rural area in northern China in the 1950s, and Bai Juyi’s description here is exactly the same as what I saw: rural life has not changed much in the past one or two thousand years. This includes able-bodied men harvesting wheat, women and children delivering meals to the fields, and poor women carrying their children to glean ears of wheat.

I must point out that gleaning wheat ears is a fairly profitable activity, provided there are enough harvested wheat fields for you to glean. It’s possible to glean enough wheat to feed a family for the year within a month.

My overall impression from reading Chinese history is that the vast majority of Chinese peasants lived in a quasi-primitive society, viewing the government above them as another world. They adapted to the government in ways similar to adapting to weather changes. If the traditional Chinese government levied taxes of less than 10% of their income on peasants, it would have little impact on their lives. Perhaps the most unfortunate group in Chinese history was the emperor, who had a 40% chance of being killed or forced to commit suicide, while bureaucratic intellectuals fared slightly better. This was determined by the unmanipulable nature of a secondary society. Traditional Chinese bureaucratic society lacked the class differentiation based on control of the means of production as revealed by Marxism; they relied on the intimidation of killing to drive the emperor and the court’s orders. A contemporary white person who has read many books on Chinese history said: the life of bureaucratic intellectuals is simply waiting in line to be killed by the emperor one day. Therefore, my general impression is that perhaps only peasants in Chinese history came close to a normal human life; the further away from the quasi-primitive society of Chinese peasants, the more abnormal their lives became: the emperor’s life was the most abnormal, while that of bureaucratic intellectuals was somewhere in between.

The conclusion is that while the material lives of Chinese historical bureaucrats and intellectuals may have been better than those of peasants, their spiritual lives were likely worse. Poems expressing sympathy for peasants, and other forms of poetry, served as a kind of pain-relieving elixir for traditional Chinese literati, akin to religious opium. It was during the Ming and Qing dynasties, with their literary inquisitions that even poems expressing sympathy for peasants were often forbidden, that the literati truly suffered. Due to their limited knowledge and experience, peasants had virtually no space to express their pity for bureaucrats and intellectuals.

literature

[1] Li, You-Sheng(2005): A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy: An Anthropological/Psychological View. London, Canada: Taoist Recovery Centre.

[2] Li Yousheng (2014): Looking at Confucius from a different perspective. Suzhou University Press.

[3] Li Yousheng (2009): On the different artistic thoughts of the two societies from the different attitudes of Confucius and Plato towards the art of poetry (Yousheng) (Xuedeng, Issue 11)