“Night of the Fifteenth of the Eighth Month” (八月十五夜) Translation
(Another Mid-Autumn Festival, happy Mooncake Day to all! This post is a bit late but considering how swamped I am with work and life, it’s a miracle I remembered to post here lol….anyway please enjoy!)
Night of the Fifteenth of the Eighth Month (1)
By Yin Wengui (Tang dynasty, 9th century-early 10th century)
Cloudless clear heavens a mirror over the land (2),
Most perfect time for reunions (3) is Mid-Autumn.
Moonlight clinging to my garments a frosty iridescence,
And over the earth an aqueous brillance ready to flow.
Mountainous shadows in the distance chilly with dew,
Raging winds over yonder capping the waves with white.
Since you (4) illuminated my heart’s true thoughts,
The anxious man may have a carefree eve.
Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the fifteeth day of the eighth month in the lunar calender.
“The land” here is “九州” (Pinyin: jiu3 zhou1) in Chinese, which literally means “nine provinces”. This is a reference to the nine original provinces that were said to make up ancient China pre-Warring States. Since the Warring States period (476-221 BC), the term “jiuzhou” is taken to mean “all of China”, hence my translation of “the land”. Synonyms include 神州/Shenzhou and 中土/Zhongtu. Not to be confused with the Japanese Kyushu, since Kyushu refers to a specific island within Japan, and Jiuzhou is a broad term for the entirety of China.
Reunion here is “团圆/團圓 ” (Pinyin: tuan2 yuan2) in Chinese, where both characters in the word denote “roundness”, and the full moon on the night of the festival is also round. This is partly why the Mid-Autumn Festival is regarded as a holiday for family and friend gatherings.
Here “you” can be interpreted to mean either the moon or a person.
Original Text (Traditional Chinese):
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