[Reading Notes] Who planted the sparse hedges in Du Fu’s “Presented to Wu Lang Again”?

   
The oth­er day, I was chat­ting over tea in my study with an old friend. I casu­al­ly flipped open Mr. Cao Mufan’s “Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Du Fu’s Poems and Mis­cel­la­neous Essays” and hap­pened to come across an analy­sis of the poem “Pre­sent­ed Again to Wu Lang.” As I was brows­ing, I was struck by the strange­ness. It turned out that Mr. Cao had pro­posed a dif­fer­ent view from almost all pre­vi­ous com­men­ta­tors. He argued that the fifth and sixth lines, “Even though it’s trou­ble­some to guard against dis­tant guests, plant­i­ng a sparse fence is quite true,” were all refer­ring to the woman with no food and no chil­dren. So, it turned out that she was the one who plant­ed the fence around the jujube tree!
 

    
Let’s look at the whole poem first:
In front of the hall, a woman with no food and no chil­dren is pick­ing dates for her west­ern neigh­bor.
If it weren’t for pover­ty, would this hap­pen? It’s just because of fear that we have to be close.
Even though it is trou­ble­some to guard against dis­tant guests, it is still very real to plant a sparse fence.
I have already com­plained about being poor from the mil­i­tary cam­paigns, and my tears are welling up in my eyes as I think of my sol­diers.
       
(*In the sixth sen­tence, the word “bian” can be writ­ten as “shi” and the word “shen” can be writ­ten as “ren”.)
 
   
Regard­ing the anno­ta­tions and appre­ci­a­tion of this poem, there is a ver­sion that is wide­ly reprint­ed on the Inter­net that is actu­al­ly quite author­i­ta­tive, so I will not reprint it here.Click to vis­it »» 
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This appre­ci­a­tion is quot­ed from the “Dic­tio­nary of Tang Poet­ry Appre­ci­a­tion”, but the orig­i­nal source should be “On Du Fu’s “Pre­sent­ed to Wu Lang Again”” in Mr. Xiao Difei’s “Du Fu Research”, and it is not­ed at the end of the arti­cle that it is “the 1961 Cen­tral Peo­ple’s Broad­cast­ing Sta­tion’s “Read­ing and Appre­ci­a­tion” broad­cast script.”
 
   
Regard­ing the fifth and sixth sen­tences, Mr. Xiao Difei’s inter­pre­ta­tion is:
 
   
“Fang” (fang) means to be on guard, to be on guard, and the sub­ject is the wid­ow. “Dis­tant guest” refers to Wu Lang. “Dushi” (duoshi) means to be over­ly con­cerned or over­ly anx­ious. The sub­ject of the next line, “cha,” is Wu Lang. These two lines sug­gest that the wid­ow, upon see­ing you put up the fence, became wary of you stop­ping her from pick­ing dates. While this is a bit over­ly sus­pi­cious and over­ly sen­si­tive, the fact that you were busy putting up the fence as soon as you moved into the cot­tage also seemed like you were real­ly going to stop her from pick­ing dates! The impli­ca­tion is: It’s not her fault for being over­ly con­cerned, but rather you’re being a bit incon­sid­er­ate. She was already on edge, and it would have been enough if you had­n’t shown any spe­cial kind­ness. Why put up the fence?
 
   
This inter­pre­ta­tion is very nat­ur­al. But Mr. Cao Mufan has anoth­er opin­ion:
 
   
In the fifth and sixth lines, old anno­ta­tions all attribute the sparse fence to Wu Lang. I have my doubts. First, all sev­en lines of this poem (except for the last line, where the poet express­es his feel­ings) intro­duce the neigh­bor­ing woman. The fourth line spec­u­lates on her psy­chol­o­gy. The image is com­plete. If the sixth line sud­den­ly changes the sub­ject and inserts a line about Wu Lang, it seems dis­joint­ed and unre­lat­ed, and this is not seen in Du Fu’s reg­u­lat­ed verse. Sec­ond, Du Fu seems to have no need to praise Wu Lang for plant­i­ng the hedge. The guest had just arrived, and Du Fu was wor­ried that he might look down on the neigh­bor­ing woman, so he explained it and made prepa­ra­tions. This is under­stand­able. Why is the guest plant­i­ng the fence also con­sid­ered a com­pli­ment? How does plant­i­ng the fence prove that Wu is “true”? … Third, accord­ing to my inter­pre­ta­tion, the con­tent of “guard­ing against dis­tant guests” is “plant­i­ng the sparse fence.” Accord­ing to the old anno­ta­tion, “guard­ing against dis­tant guests” is a phrase with­out con­tent. Fourth, although the guard­ing against dis­tant guests is busy, the two lines about plant­i­ng the sparse fence are about one per­son, so the two words “that is… then…” can be used to con­nect them close­ly. For exam­ple, the last cou­plet of the poem “Hear­ing the Gov­ern­ment Troops Recov­er Henan and Hebei” goes “Imme­di­ate­ly from Ba Gorge through Wu Gorge, then down to Xiangyang and towards Luoyang” also uses the phrase “i.e., then…” to echo each oth­er. If the first line refers to the neigh­bor woman and the sec­ond to Wu Lang, each refer­ring to a dif­fer­ent per­son, the words “i.e., then” and “next” would lose their func­tion of close con­nec­tion.
 
   
Look at what these two peo­ple said. They both make sense! Mr. Cao’s fourth rea­son can also be found in an exam­ple, which is the “Right nowSend flow­ers to bloom and study deeply,Con­ve­nienceThe sub­ject of these two sen­tences is the rogue spring.
 
   
How­ev­er, Mr. Xiao said that he has a very strong sup­port group of rel­a­tives and friends. Just pick a few “allies” at ran­dom.
 
   
Zhang Zhong­gang’s “Select­ed Poems of Du Fu” also select­ed this poem, and the mean­ing of the anno­ta­tion is exact­ly the same as Mr. Xiao’s inter­pre­ta­tion;
 
   
Ge Xiaoy­in’s Com­men­tary on Select­ed Poems of Du Fu explains it this way:She was wary of you, a new guest from afar, and did­n’t dare to pick dates. Although it was trou­ble­some, she became seri­ous when you put up the fence as soon as you arrived.”
 
   
Chen Yiheng’s “A Crit­i­cal Biog­ra­phy of Du Fu” (Part 2) is inter­pret­ed as“It’s unnec­es­sary for her to be on guard against a dis­tant vis­i­tor like you when she comes to pick dates, but it’s too much to put up a fence as soon as you arrive.”
 
   
Inter­est­ing­ly, Mr. Chen is Pro­fes­sor Ge’s teacher, but their inter­pre­ta­tions of this sen­tence are some­what dif­fer­ent. Chen said it means “Wu Lang is plant­i­ng a sparse fence” and “Wu Lang is too seri­ous about it”, while Ge said it means “Wu Lang is plant­i­ng a sparse fence” but “the neigh­bor woman is seri­ous about it”.
 
   
After care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, what Mr. Cao Mufan said about “prais­ing Wu Lang’s hedge” is even more inter­est­ing. That is to say, who are the three words “que shi zhen” or “que ren zhen” refer­ring to in the poem? Is it a com­pli­ment or a bit of a blame? In fact, every­one has dif­fer­ent opin­ions.
 
   
Let’s look at how Feng Zhi inter­pret­ed it in his Select­ed Poems of Du Fu:
 
   
This sen­tence is quite com­plex and dif­fi­cult to under­stand. It rough­ly means: Wu Lang is a new­com­er from afar, so there’s no need to for­bid her from pick­ing dates. The old woman was already wary of him, wary of him and afraid to pick dates again, though that was also trou­ble­some. 
[Then inter­ject] But Wu Lang was weav­ing a fence, and when the old woman saw it, she became seri­ous.
 
   
Appar­ent­ly, Feng Zhi also believed that it was Wu Lang who plant­ed the sparse fence. Ge Xiaoy­in’s state­ment that “the neigh­bor woman took it seri­ous­ly” is the same as Feng Zhi’s state­ment.
 
   
So where did the say­ing of Wu Lang plant­i­ng a sparse fence come from?
 
   
Qiu Zhaoao wrote in his Detailed Notes on Du Fu’s Poems:“A woman is wary of guests, always filled with fear. Wu puts up a fence, show­ing no pity for the poor.”
 
   
Pu Qilong’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “Read­ing Du’s Heart”“At the fifth or sixth watch, the woman was wary of dis­tant vis­i­tors, almost think­ing Wu was mean, which was obvi­ous­ly due to her sus­pi­cions. When she saw the fence being put up, she sus­pect­ed Wu had set it up specif­i­cal­ly for her, and her actions seemed to be true.“But what is inter­est­ing is that although Pu Qilong believes that the sub­ject of the sen­tence “insert­ing the fence” is Wu Lang, he does not think that Wu Lang has already insert­ed the fence at this time, but is just prepar­ing to insert the fence. So there is a more detailed expla­na­tion:“When you lived in this hall, you were well aware of the suf­fer­ing of the neigh­bor woman, and you allowed her to steal dates to sur­vive. Wu Lang had just arrived, and not know­ing why, he was about to put up a fence to pro­tect the gar­den. When you heard about it in the East Vil­lage, you rushed to stop him, but you did­n’t blame him after he had already put it up.”
 
   
Yang Lun’s Du Shi Jing Quan’s two lines are “Even though guard­ing against dis­tant guests is trou­ble­some, plant­i­ng sparse fences is very true.” Chang­ing the word “使” changes the mean­ing:[The sen­tence about pre­ven­tion] says that Wu Lang has just come, so it is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a ban. [The sen­tence about inser­tion] Once the sparse fence is put up, the woman is afraid that Wu Lang will be reject­ed, and it seems that it was real­ly set up for him, so he dare not come again.——Here it is still about Wu Lang plant­i­ng a sparse fence.
 
   
Qian Qiany­i’s “Qian’s Notes on Du Fu’s Poems” did not pro­vide any anno­ta­tions for these two sen­tences (it seems he felt it was unnec­es­sary), and the text used the same anno­ta­tions as Yang Lun, but it is unknown what his under­stand­ing of the poem was.
 
   
Zhu Heling’s Anno­tat­ed Col­lec­tion of Du Gong­bu’s Poems still uses the text “Even though guard­ing against dis­tant guests is trou­ble­some, plant­i­ng sparse fences is very true”, but he specif­i­cal­ly anno­tat­ed the fifth and sixth sen­tences:“A dis­tant guest refers to Wu Lang. “Plant­i­ng a sparse fence” means weav­ing a fence to lim­it the flow of peo­ple. These two words refer to the words of the woman next door to the west, and the old inter­pre­ta­tion is not cor­rect.”
It seems that Zhu Heling should be con­sid­ered an ally of Mr. Cao Mufan, at least in that the sub­ject of both sen­tences is the west­ern neigh­bor’s woman, and their views are con­sis­tent. How­ev­er, Zhu’s cou­plet uses “even if…”, while Cao’s cou­plet uses “even if…”, so there is still a dif­fer­ence in mean­ing.
 
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[Com­ments from a Per­son] Du Fu’s “Pre­sent­ed Again to Wu Lang” is one of the most acces­si­ble poems of his time. The fifth and sixth lines appear straight­for­ward on the sur­face. How­ev­er, upon clos­er exam­i­na­tion, you’ll dis­cov­er that numer­ous com­men­ta­tors and schol­ars have dif­fer­ing inter­pre­ta­tions, even regard­ing the lit­er­al mean­ing. This demon­strates how chal­leng­ing it is to ful­ly under­stand a poem in its orig­i­nal con­text, over a thou­sand years lat­er.

   
But per­haps pre­cise­ly because it is so dif­fi­cult, it is so much fun to study it, just like solv­ing a case and guess­ing a puz­zle O(∩_∩)O haha~
 
   
For exam­ple, if you want to fig­ure out who is the one who plant­ed the sparse fence, you might also ask: Then, who is Wu Lang in the poem?
 
   
Shi Hong­bao, author of “On Read­ing Du Fu’s Poems,” made a sur­pris­ing rev­e­la­tion after a lengthy analy­sis: this Wu Lang was Du Fu’s son-in-law! (The analy­sis is detailed in “On Read­ing Du Fu’s Poems,” Vol­ume 20, “A Brief on Wu Lang’s Legal Affairs.”) The main rea­son­ing stems from the phrase “they met for the sake of in-laws,” the fact that “Wu Lang” must be a younger gen­er­a­tion, and the fact that in “Wu Lang Met the North­ern House in the Late Qing Dynasty,” Wu Lang vis­its Du Fu through the back door, and the two are clear­ly very close.
 
   
The “son-in-law” the­o­ry regard­ing Wu Lang’s iden­ti­ty has been sup­port­ed by Mr. Jiang Xian­wei, who ded­i­cat­ed a spe­cial arti­cle in his “Draft Essays on Du Fu’s Kuizhou Poems” titled “A Defence of ‘Wu Lang’ as Du Fu’s Son-in-law.” This arti­cle essen­tial­ly expands on Lao Shi’s argu­ment. Over­all, it’s quite enter­tain­ing, espe­cial­ly for read­ers with a pen­chant for gos­sip.
 
   
Chen Yihuan’s “A Crit­i­cal Biog­ra­phy of Du Fu” (Part 2) also has a spe­cial expla­na­tion on this.Shi Hong­bao believed that Wu Lang was the son-in-law of Du Fu. Although his argu­ment was detailed, the evi­dence was insuf­fi­cient and it was not cred­i­ble. There­fore, I will not cite it.
 
   
In short, due to insuf­fi­cient evi­dence, this court does not accept the claim. ^_^
 
Argen­tine Primera Divi­sion com­piled on the night of June 13, 2011
 
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【Sup­ple­men­tary Note】
   
Anoth­er inter­pre­ta­tion is about “dis­tant guests,” under­stand­ing them as guests pass­ing by. This gives rise to a new inter­pre­ta­tion of sen­tences 5 and 6, with the sub­ject uni­fied as Wu Lang. It goes some­thing like this: Wu Lang put up a fence to pre­vent passers­by from pick­ing dates, but this was too seri­ous, and even the neigh­bor woman did­n’t dare come to pick the dates.
 
   
This expla­na­tion makes sense, but it also has two inap­pro­pri­ate points: First, the term “far-away guest” in both clas­si­cal Chi­nese poet­ry and Du Fu’s poet­ry does not mean “passer­by,” but rather refers to a per­son vis­it­ing from a dis­tant place, specif­i­cal­ly a per­son or the poet him­self; sec­ond, even if it means a passer­by, how can pre­vent­ing passers­by from pick­ing dates be con­sid­ered “inter­fer­ing”? For a detailed analy­sis of this aspect, see Mr. Xiao Difei’s “On Du Fu’s ‘Anoth­er Pre­sen­ta­tion to Wu Lang’.”
 
   
This arti­cle also men­tions the spe­cial mean­ing of the poem’s title, a point sim­i­lar to Shi Hong­bao’s pre­vi­ous analy­sis. Wu Lang was clear­ly a rel­a­tive of Du Fu, and a younger gen­er­a­tion. Even if he was­n’t his son-in-law, it’s pos­si­ble he was a mem­ber of his son-in-law’s fam­i­ly, or per­haps a younger gen­er­a­tion of his in-laws. Wu Lang held an offi­cial title, “Fashe”. How­ev­er, it’s unclear whether this Wu Fashe came to Kuizhou to serve as a judge, or whether he was orig­i­nal­ly a judge some­where (per­haps Zhongzhou) and fled to Kuizhou with his fam­i­ly.
 
   
So how do we under­stand the phrase “yet again pre­sent­ed to Wu Lang”? The phrase “yet again” refers to a pre­vi­ous poem, “A Let­ter to Wu Lang on Legal Affairs,” in which Du Fu wrote a let­ter to Wu Lang. This is the sec­ond one. But why “yet again pre­sent­ed” and not “yet again”? “Pre­sent­ed” is a way of show­ing respect to one’s supe­ri­or. Since Wu Lang was Du Fu’s junior, he cer­tain­ly was­n’t his supe­ri­or. He had already “writ­ten” to him before, so why both­er pre­sent­ing again? Du Fu’s good inten­tions are evi­dent here. He was try­ing to dis­cuss mat­ters with Wu Lang. He had orig­i­nal­ly lent Wu Lang his own thatched cot­tage, and as the elder, he was ask­ing him to look after a woman who lived next door to the west. Yet, he used such a polite, con­sul­ta­tive tone. It’s touch­ing to think about it. It’s no won­der that some peo­ple feel that Du Fu was par­tic­u­lar­ly polite, atten­tive, and pro­tec­tive of Wu Lang, speak­ing to him like a beloved son-in-law.
 
   
But there’s anoth­er point that’s often over­looked. Du Fu and Wu Lang were both in Kuizhou, so why did they need to exchange let­ters? This is based on his­tor­i­cal evi­dence, as the thatched cot­tage Du Fu lent to Wu Lang was in Longxi, pos­si­bly west of Bai­di City. His own new res­i­dence was in Dong­tun, and field research sug­gests the two places are more than ten miles apart. There­fore, casu­al vis­its would­n’t have been con­ve­nient; any com­mu­ni­ca­tion would have required a let­ter or let­ter deliv­ered by a ser­vant.
 
   
If it were a nov­el, Du Fu might have writ­ten “A Brief to Wu Lang on Judi­cial Affairs,” then real­ized he had for­got­ten to men­tion anoth­er impor­tant mat­ter, and quick­ly wrote “Anoth­er Pre­sen­ta­tion to Wu Lang,” instruct­ing his ser­vant to make anoth­er trip. This round trip of over twen­ty miles was all to make it eas­i­er for the neigh­bor woman to pick dates…
 
   
Many com­men­ta­tors sug­gest that the neigh­bor woman is an old woman, which is also strange. Clear­ly, there is only “a woman with­out food and chil­dren,” so she is def­i­nite­ly a wid­ow. As to whether she was young, mid­dle-aged, or elder­ly, there is no expla­na­tion. Per­haps because “she had com­plained to Du Fu about her pover­ty,” and because Du Fu was already 56 years old in 767 AD, this woman had com­plained to him about her suf­fer­ing. Per­haps this cre­at­ed the impres­sion that the neigh­bor woman was like­ly an old woman.
 
Sup­ple­men­tary notes on the morn­ing of June 14th