Being a stranger in a foreign land, I miss my family even more during the festive season.

From: Recalling Shandong Brothers on September 9th (Wang Wei)

Original text: Being a stranger in a foreign land, I miss my family even more during the festive season. I know from afar that when my brothers climbed to a high place, there was only one less person planting dogwood trees.

Translation: I am away from home alone as a guest in a foreign land. I miss my relatives especially when the festive season comes. I think back to today when my brothers climbed high and looked far into the distance, with dogwoods on their heads, it was a pity that I was the only one missing.

Extended information:

The original annotation of this poem: "When he was seventeen." It means that this is Wang Wei's work when he was seventeen. At that time, Wang Wei was wandering alone between Luoyang and Chang'an. He was from Puzhou (now Yongji, Shanxi). Puzhou was east of Huashan, so he called the brothers in his hometown Shandong brothers. September 9th is the Double Ninth Festival, and there is a custom of climbing in some places in China.

The poem was written because I missed my relatives in my hometown during the Double Ninth Festival. Wang Wei lives in Puzhou, east of Huashan Mountain, so the title is "Remembering Shandong Brothers". He was probably seeking fame in Chang'an when he wrote this poem. Although the prosperous imperial capital was very attractive to the young scholars who were eager to pursue official careers at that time, for a young wanderer, it was, after all, a "foreign land" without any friends; and the more prosperous and lively the wanderer was in the vast sea of ??people, He seems more and more lonely.

There is a custom of climbing high during the Double Ninth Festival. When climbing high, one wears a dogwood bag, which is said to avoid disasters. Cornus officinalis, also known as Yuejiao, is a fragrant plant. In three or four sentences, if you just generally recall how your brothers climbed high on the Double Ninth Festival and wore dogwood, but you are alone in a foreign land and cannot participate, although you write about the feeling of missing your family during the festival, it will appear flat and lack of novelty and affection. .

What the poet was thinking about was: "There is one less person planted everywhere with dogwood trees." This means that the brothers who were far away in their hometown all wore dogwood trees on their bodies when they climbed up today, but they found that one brother was missing── Not included in myself. It seems that the regret is not that I was unable to spend the holiday with my brothers in my hometown, but that my brothers were not able to fully reunite during the holiday; it seems that my situation of being alone in a foreign land as a stranger is not worth talking about, but it is the shortcomings of my brothers that need more attention. Thoughtful.

This is twists and turns and unexpected. And this kind of unexpectedness is its depth, the new police department. Du Fu's "Moonlight Night": "I pity the children from afar, and recall Chang'an without understanding", which has the same meaning and meaning as these two sentences, but Wang's poem seems to be even less focused.