#china oc

[kindredsister-blog]

Redraw my boi!

[aglimpseofsomethingintimate]

Just recall how the “Prefaces” author and Zheng Xuan take advantage of the absence of personal pronouns to change the gender of poetic speakers—a lovesick young man in “Ospreys” to Hou Fei, and a young woman passionately in love in “I Beg of You, Zhong Zi” to Duke Zhuang. Without exploiting the ambiguities arising from the omission of pronouns, the “Prefaces” author and Zheng Xuan could not possibly have allegorized the two poems in the ways they did. If the “Prefaces” author and Zheng Xuan were to use a language like English, in which no sentences make sense without a stated subject or an unambiguously implied one (such as the implied “you” in an imperative sentence like “Open the window”), would they be able to change the genders of poetic speakers at will to facilitate their allegorizing endeavors?

Thinking abt China’s poetry to India(she/he queen) and the fluidity and flexibility of the gendered subject in Chinese poetry…

[aglimpseofsomethingintimate]

Nine nines.. end of winter… plum blossoms into apricots.. Ryukyu getting held back from returning home for some reason seeing snow for the first time taking part in festivities with China..

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41645588.pdf

[aglimpseofsomethingintimate]

I don’t think people ever saw or felt China as some warm benevolent presence like a mother creator etc. he is very much more aligned with the Yellow River’s history.

The best way to describe the vibes China gave to emperors etc was like that of the Yellow River— something that existed thousands of years before them and would continue to exist long after they passed. The heavy weight of history etc…

It’s why him and Mao weren’t compatible later on especially which China was not surprised by. Most emperors and leaders near the end of their lives spurned China or could no longer stand being in the presence of a being that would live long after them. Representative of their triumphs and failures, witness to a legacy they will attempt to create and protect but cannot foresee … (Re: later on I mean Mao’s um silly paranoia era. Lol. Wresting for control)

I also have lots of thoughts of the Yellow River. It used to just be known as the River— it was the rise of farming in the north that increased sediment input into the river that eventually gave it its muddy color. Something about how China is tied to his humans… the many floods and sorrows caused by the River were mostly because of human interference. The complex relationship he has with them…

Of course keeping nation tan rules with him representing China the people and cultures but the other key aspect of China is nature/that’s where China’s core personality lies… distinct from the whims of humans. When he becomes the Yellow River is truly when his fate becomes forever intrinsically tied with the people of the plains.

But idk ‼️ I don’t want to overfocus on yellow River as the ‘cradle of Chinese civilization’ because the origins were more wide spread and nuanced than that

[aglimpseofsomethingintimate]

“If heaven had feeling, heaven too would grow old.”

Read in isolation, it is a vividly counterfactual expression of a somewhat conventional sentiment: unfeeling (wu qing) nature is immune to the transience and decline that feeling (you qing) humans cannot avoid. The line’s real strangeness, and Li He’s parting of ways with the commonplace, only emerges clearly within its setting in this poem, which centers on the bronze immortal’s uncanny crossing of the boundary between you qing and wu qing.

The receding sound of water with which the poem ends would fit naturally at the close of an excursion or parting poem, but what would there be lovely but conventional becomes here hauntingly uncanny because we must imagine the river’s fading sound from the bronze immortal’s perspective.

Thoughts about China’s uncanniness being the result of his identity being at the intersection of nature and human and the constant push and pull between the two…

[kindredsister-blog]

Blood? Looks bad