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Morton Marcus: He wrote in the summer of 1933: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, indigo, who is dancing with these rainbow colors in the sky. Air after rain, slanting sun, mountains and passes turning blue in each

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changing moment. Fierce battles this year, bullet holes in village walls. These mountain passes are decorated, looking even more beautiful today. His name was Mao Zedong, though many of you know him as Mao

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Tse-tung and the Zedong is merely the pinyin pronunciation of his name and romanization, and is what has become to be the official pronunciation of his name in China. And, of course, he is the legendary leader of a billion people, the Red Chinese

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leader who, on October 1st, 1949, fifty years ago, ten days before this, declared the People's Republic of China as a fact. And tonight, in honor of this event, I'm going to read some of the poems of Mao Zedong, a person who many of us know as

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a terrible dictator who caused the death of millions, but he's not felt that way at all in China, and in many other parts of the world. He is a man who struggled most of his life for the peasants and the people and really had a vision of China as:

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one, being a nation that would be able to feed and take care of itself in health and prosperity; and two, a nation that would be able to square its shoulders and be proud in the world. So tonight, I'm going to go over some of the poems of Mao Zedong,

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which are short but are rather dense and have a lot of allusions, and I'm going to show you how that works in a moment. I should tell you that Mao Zedong is considered to be one of the finest poets in Chinese in the 20th century. And if you

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are puzzled about the idea of Chinese poetry, and don't know anything about it, Chinese poetry is among the greatest poetry in the world. It has had a tradition that goes back thousands of years and accounts for some of the greatest

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literature written in the medium. Certainly it is a poetry I study again and again and love dearly. Mao Zedong was born in 1893, he died in 1976. He was born in the province of Hunan. His father was a peasant, he actually went out to the fields,

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the rice fields, and tilled them. His mother would quote and sing Buddhist lullabies to him. His father was a very domineering authoritarian man who Mao did not get along with at all. And so there was an authority conflict immediately.

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And if you want to look psychologically into what made Mao Zedong a revolutionary, you can play that game. But whatever the reason was, I'm skipping over a lot of the legendary facts, when he finally became a student, he was very much

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impressed with the uprisings of the peasants. First in the Qing Dynasty, and then even after that dynasty was over because of the warlords, and because of the absolute, grudging, drudging poverty and humiliation that peasants and the lower classes

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in China just had to endure for centuries, and he wanted to put an end to it. So one way you can look at Mao certainly is as a humanitarian. Though he was educated, finally, in the university, most of the education that is of interest to

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us because of its influence was done by his very eclectic reading. He was a voracious reader and knew things like Adam Smith's, "Wealth of Nations," and a lot of books on economics and philosophy from the West, and history as well.

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In Chinese, he was extremely well-versed in the poets and was very much himself a mandarin, though he would never describe himself that way. And a lot of his poems, as we'll see very shortly, really have a lot of references and allusions that

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have to be explained, not only to English audiences, but in many cases to Chinese audiences as well. Yes, he was a communist, yes, his first concern was the people and art for the people, a literature, a drama for the people, but that

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was the policies that he insisted others follow. In actual practice, he went the way of a classical Chinese poet using absolutely strict metrics, or what would be considered metrics in Chinese. It was called the ancient style, it had

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five to seven characters per line, it's extremely complex. His poems are perfect examples of classic poetry, which is written in a kind of word or character which is only known by the learned classes. So in other words, in his own practice of

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poetry Mao Zedong was an elitist, everything he was against in his policies, as leader of the communist nation, even in his policies for art which he wanted to be the art of and for the peasants, which should be used in the class war

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to overthrow the bourgeoisie, both in fact and in their psychological mindset, which they had exercised over China. In fact, one of his targets was Confucius himself, so that should tell you a lot there.

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I'm going to read, and start to read poems from the beginning. He really would write poems all the time, we have in his Collected Works, which I'm holding in my hand, a very thin book, only forty odd poems. And they are, as I said, perfect

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specimens of these classical forms. Well, why just forty odd poems? Well, there must have been thousands of them written because we have story after story from other leaders in the Long March and other parts of the struggle that say that he

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was writing poems all the time, and even during committee meetings, where other people would doodle, he would actually write these poems and ball them up and throw them on the floor. And then since he was already considered a god, people would

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run to pick up these bits of paper and smooth them out. And we feel that there are many, maybe even hundreds of Mao Zedong poems that are in private hands in China. And the reason that they have not got out yet is that Mao himself felt that

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his poem should not be published, that they were bad examples to the young, who should not write in these old forms, who should not be elitist. So you've got this very strange situation going on, and only in 1957 when he felt his

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power slipping -- and could not get even speeches published in the publishing houses of Beijing, and went to Shanghai where he still had influence and friends -- did he allow them to start to publish his poems in groups of ten. And that the

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final forty that arose from that are what we have of his poems, and he's always pooh-pooing them, so keep that in mind, they are very interesting when you do look at them. At any rate, here is the first poem we have from him, and all

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of his poems are dated. And what is interesting about them is that they really are a history of the struggle of the communists, the People's Republic of China, to win against the very corrupt nationalists of Chiang Kai Shek

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over a period of- very, very long period of time. If you don't know, when the Manchus were overthrown, the dynasties were overthrown. There was a democratic coalition government, which consisted of what we would call the democrats or the

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nationalists, the Nationalist Party under Chiang Kai-shek, and the communists and a number of other members were part of this coalition government. Mao was one of those members of this coalition government in 1927. In a sudden move, Chiang Kai-shek

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turned around and started to imprison and kill all the communists he could get his hands on, it is called The Night of the Long Knives. Mao escaped after brief incarceration, and he then went to the moun ains of Kwangsi Province and

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e wrote these poems -- and this is 1925 -- and in 1927 and '28, he is holed up with just a hund ed men on these mountains in v ry, very harsh conditions. And his is the poem, "Cha gsha." Well, actually, that s not the poem. This is an earl

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er poem and Changsha is wher he went to school and it is i Hunan Province and it is near the Yangtze. And this is wher he went to school. And so: CHANGSHA FROM AUTUMN 1925

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Standing alone in the cold autumn, where the Xiang River flows north on the tip of Orange Island, looking at thousands of hills red all over, row after row of trees all red, the river is green to the bottom. A hundred boats struggling, eagles

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striking the sky, fish gliding under the clear water. All creatures fight for freedom under the frosty sky. Bewildered at empty space, I asked the great gray Earth, who controls the rise and fall of things? Hundreds of friends used to come

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here. Remember the old times, the years of fullness, when we were students and young, blooming and brilliant with a young intellectual's emotional argument, fist up, fist down, fingers pointing at river and mountain, writings full of

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excitement, lords of a thousand houses, now nearly done. Remember still, how in the middle of the stream we struck the water making waves which stopped boats from moving. And that is one of the few poems that it is still very impersonal

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where you hear him reflecting on his past life. Most of the time, he is very impersonal. But there are those lines in here that begin to stick out because of their political import or suggestion such as "all creatures fight for freedom

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under the frosty sky." And at this point, many of his friends had already been killed or imprisoned. He had gone to Beijing to be educated, to marry his first wife. Several years later, he is in Jinggang Mountain. And this is when The

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Night of the Long Knives started, as I said in '27, and this is Jinggang mountain. He is now up there with less than a hundred people. He is being attacked continually by the Nationalists. Another group under a young man who is trained

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in military tactics in Germany, by the name of Zhu De, comes and joins him and Zhu De is a military man. And they have a council at night to see who will be the leader and Mao immediately gives way to Zhu De and becomes really the political

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commissar of this small band of a hundred. And together he and Zhu De will spend the next seven years fighting first the Jinggang Mountain, then moving into Jiangxi and fighting and finally going on the Long March in 1934 and '35. Zhu De will

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become the General in Chief of all the liberation armies, and one of the three great heroes of China, along with Mao and Zhou Enlai. But here is: JINGGANG MOUNTAIN 1928

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Below the mountain, the Nationalist flags flying, high on the mountain are bugles blowing a thousand circles of the enemy around us. We still stand unmoved. Defense is deadly, trench and wall, the strongest fort is our will. From

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Huangyang Jie cannon roar, crying, the enemy runs away in the night. And let me just explain that Huangyang Jie is a very windy mountain path which only one, at the most two men can ascend. And

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what Zhu De and Mao had done was they had withdrawn their troops to draw the Nationalist troops into the defile and the narrow path and then they had come down in ambush from either side and had destroyed this unit. They were not successful much of the

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time, they were certainly, how shall I say, they were the victims a lot of times. Let me read you another poem. Though you would not know it, that and a poem such as this, which I started the shows with, are not really very Chinese poems

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because they praise war. So when he says: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, indigo, who is dancing with these rainbow colors in the sky? Air after

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rain, slanting sun, mountains in passes turning blue in each changing moment. [Commentary] Beautiful landscape description, beautiful color description. This is really his strength but now it changes.

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Suddenly this beautiful landscape is invaded by this: Fierce battles last year, bullet holes in village walls, these mountain and passes are decorated, looking even more beautiful today.

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[Commentry] Why are they looking more beautiful today? Because there have been battles in the mountains, the battles make them beautiful, because the battles are part of the struggle that Mao feels is going to release the Chinese people. That is a

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very, very rare kind of poem in Chinese literature, and almost all the great poets from Li Bo to Du Fu. If you know anything about Chinese poetry, you know that they are always lamenting people -- soldiers, husbands being called away to the war,

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wives sitting alone in misery, hunger, and mental anguish because their men are gone -- they even take the voices of women sometimes. War is not to be praised, war is not to be glorified in any way in classic Chinese poetry, except for a

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poet who is a friend of Du Fu called Zhang San. And it is Zhang San, who among others, Mao Zedong was very interested in reading because Zhang San, a friend of Du Fu's, who he called my younger brother, who would rise to become the censor for

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all of Tang Dynasty China, praised war and I will read you one of his poems. This is called: HORSEMAN ON THE GREAT SICHUAN ROAD, from the Tang Dynasty, way back around 750 AD.

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Behold, the horsemen are galloping along the Sichuan road beside the Snow White Sea. Sand stretches like prairie grass, so vast, and the yellowness meets the sky. Here in Luntai in late autumn, the wind howls all night, a riverbed of broken

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stones as large as kettle drums is thrown up by the wind, and everywhere the air is full of stones. The Mongols pasture their fat horses on the yellow grass, westward among the gold hills, smoke and dust are flying. The Han general collects

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his forces against the western enemy. All night he has not removed his coat of nail. All night the army marches, weapons touching, and the winds muzzle as a knife slashing the sky. The manes of the horses are icicles, strings of cash turned to ice,

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five petal flowers among the smoke clouds of sweat. In the tent, the general dips his pen in ice. Ah, if the Mongols heard of it, would not their courage fail them? We, we know that they have no love for our short swords. We, we know that the

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army awaits tidings of victory. Well, this luxuriating in the violence and hardship of war, it's a very different thing. But with his whole life dedicated to struggle, Mao Zedong will write most of his poems on war,

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because most of his poems are actually about battles before he finally even reached a place of any security. In a classical rhyming form, which -- and these are translations I'm reading by Paul Engle and his wife, Hua-ling Nieh Engle. He is a

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Yale Younger Poet, a winner years ago in the 1930s. She is a Chinese citizen. These poems are written, translated more than thirty years ago. This is the four-line aphorism that Mao wrote.

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Enemy advance, we run away. Enemy stop, we delay. Enemy tired, we annoy. Enemy retreat, we destroy. That was written in 1930, in fact, it's a New Year's Day poem. And what is interesting about it is that Mao had

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formulated along with Zhu De his military strategy. He could never face Chiang Kai-shek head on in battle, that had become disastrous every time he did it. So when he is up in Jinggang Mountain, he and Zhu De begin to develop guerrilla tactics, which

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will become the tactics of the Eighth Army or the People's Army. Now, why do I find this interesting and why should I even mention it to you? Because he gets the tactics from Chinese literature: from, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," and another

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book called, "All Men Are Brothers." And he will actually use the tactics he reads in these popular Chinese novels against the Nationalists and he will trick them with the sometimes thousand year old literary tricks because they do

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not recognize what he is doing. So literature really plays a gigantic part in Mao's life. He lives by it, he will pursue his politics by it, and even the way he makes war. So that description in four lines, and listen to it again, is the

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perfect description of how to wage guerrilla warfare: Enemy advance, we run away. Enemy stop, we delay. Enemy tired, we annoy. Enemy retreat, we destroy. Another poem on that New Year's Day 1930:

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Ninghua, Ch'ingliu, Kueihua: Roads are narrow, woods deep, moss slippery. Where are we going today? Straight ahead to Wuyi Mountain. Here under the mountain, there under the mountain, the wind blows red flags like a painting.

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And when he will use the word red, it will always have the connotation of the Red Armies or the Communist Armies. But in Chinese, red also has a lot of other connotations: it means health, it means potency, it means adolescent energy, and it

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is always looked on by the Chinese people very favorably. It is a favorable color and does not have the connotations it has in the West; it is one of strength and well-being and health. So automatically in their mind, just because the

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communist colors were red all over the world -- thanks to the Bolsheviks in Russia -- we have this sense of more than just communism working on the Chinese psyche. There are many other war poems, fighting against the first siege, fighting against

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the second siege. But I am going to skip over those and go on to On October 14th, 1934, some one hundred thousand Red Army troops others. He will literally tell us about different battles during the Long March. And the Long March has become almost a

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biblical event in China. And I'll just read you something about it if you've heard about it but don't know what it is. Fighting his way out of the mountains and into Kwangsi Province, Mao and the rest of the forces are just harassed by

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tremendous advances by the Nationalists in what's called the Annihilation Campaign -- the attempt to annihilate the Communists, but really, encircle them and then annihilate them. And finally, in 1934, that's seven years now that he's been

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fighting, Mao breaks out with a group of one hundred thousand people and starts the Long March, but the losses were so great, his wife is left behind, she is arrested and tortured and killed, and, in fact, Mao loses all but one of his sons in the

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course of these struggles. under Mao abandon their Soviet in Kwangsi Province, Southeast China after severe defeats by the Nationalist Army and began to walk west, women and children and wounded accompanying them.

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In the first three weeks, twenty-five thousand men died fighting the block houses which Chiang Kai-shek's army had put in their way. It was estimated that fifteen battles were fought with skirmishes every day. In the three hundred and

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sixty-eight days of the Long March, the Red Army walked two hundred thirty-five days in daytime, and eighteen days at night. They covered an estimated six thousand to eight thousand miles over some of the most difficult landscapes in the

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world: deserts, snow mountains, swamps, fast rivers in high gorges, under fire almost every day, both on the ground and from planes. In Kweichow they fought both local warlords and the Nationalist Army. Five months of the year there are low clouds

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over Kweichow Province, which, in this case, protected them from the air, but they still sustained grim losses on the ground. Though it has been made a reverend part of communist

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ideology, the Long March was an enormous defeat for Mao Zedong. His wife Ho Tzu-chen, another one his wife was advanced in pregnancy and during one of the bombings, she suffered eighten to twenty wounds of shrapnel, although she survived. The

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wounds were painful all the way to the end of the March. Mao's brother, Mao Zetan, was killed fighting in 1935 on the March. Mao said that the women showed more courage than the men. Of the hundreds of women who began the march, less than thirty of

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them survived. And of the hundred thousand who started the march, twenty thousand of them only survived. And I'm not really pushing the case of Chinese communism here. It is just a part of history I think that we should know. Mao makes

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it into Yan'an Province in 1935 in the north-west, and there with some relative security, he calls an end to the war against Chiang Kai-shek, asking Chiang Kai-shek to join him in fighting the common enemy, the Japanese who have invaded, seeing this

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divided, destroyed land in absolute chaos. They do join together, and while he has his headquarters at Yan'an, and he formulates a lot of the policies on art and economics and what will be the government after the war, which, of course, the

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United States has joined in. He tries to find a way to register peace with Chiang Kai-shek, it doesn't work out. The people begin to desert to Mao Zedong by the millions. And when he starts marching again, in 1947, I mean, there are hardly any battles,

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it's just a gigantic gathering of people and he just marches straight through the south, driving the Nationalists to Taiwan and the islands off of the coast, the southern coast. And then in October 1st, 1949, with ramifications in the United

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States and everywhere else, he declares the People's Republic of China. Certainly, and I think the country that will be the country to contend with in the 21st century economically, they're

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already producing and grow vast quantities of materials at very, very inexpensive prices. There's an enormous amount of American- really enormous amount of American investment in China. Hyatt Regency is building hotels all over the place. Holiday Inn,

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I mean, Colonel Sanders is on one side of Tiananmen Square, staring across the square at the statue of Mao Zedong. It is an amazing conglomeration of the modern high rise over there with the old shanty hubbles, but it certainly is going to be a

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culture, and a country, and an economy we are going to be addressing. We're going to take a break now and when we come back, I'll read the only public announcement I have. Although, before we leave I just want to remind you people who may be

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going out to a movie or going out for a Big Mac, that next week we're going to be pitching here for Octopush, and asking you to support the station, which I hope you feel really serves you, and is concerned with enhancing your life

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intellectually, musically, every way you can imagine. Take a break now. Welcome again to the Poetry Show. This is Mort Marcus and I am going to read you the only public announcement we have: on

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Friday, October the 15th, Dennis Bernstein, a widely published investigative journalist and host of "Flashpoints" on KPFA FM in Berkeley will read from his new critique, "Henry Hyde's Moral Universe, Where More Than Space and Time Are Warped."

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Bernstein details Hyde's roles not covered by the media, including defender of terrorism, friend of those who lied to Congress, sponsor of lethal legislation, and SNL fiscal escape artist. And of course, Henry Hyde was one of the people

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who led the fight and the committee that attempted to and successfully actually impeached President Clinton last year. So pay attention to that, that's Friday the 15th on 7:30pm, and actually, that's as far as we'll go.

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We are talking about Chinese poetry tonight and Mao Zedong. And I'm just going to read some more poems now and just describe some of the things that happened to him. I'll read two of his most famous poems, one of them is called, "Snow." And remember

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the things we said about red and also the fact that Mao, unlike the classical Chinese poets who would always look at nature, and see themselves as part of the ebb and flow of nature, going along with nature's power, Mao is, remember, a communist and he

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does not feel that way. And he embraces you could say the Nietzschean ideal that will will out in the end. And people who knew him said that he just would never give up. And I must tell you, when you're losing eighty thousand people, and just

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traveling through impossible country, if you can get a book about the Long March, I think you'll find it one of the most amazing adventure stories you've ever read, survival stories, if you will.

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He never ever gave up. In fact, he was very, very sick, had to be carried in the litter for a while. But even when he was on horseback, he was writing poetry in his head while these things were going on, and he would hum the poems, because these Chinese

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poems in classical styles are supposed to be sung and so he would hum them. In fact, all of these poems are actually written in what's called a Ci Form, which, among other things, is based on supplying lyrics to old folklore melodies, and we

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totally have no relationship to that in these poems at all, they have been lost in the translation completely. We just tried to get some sense out of this. Here is, "Snow," one of his two most famous poems. And, again, notice the wonderful

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sense of landscape here and also, it seems as though you're in an airplane looking down on China. And in fact, I think I'm going to read this in another translation, which I like all the more. Yeah, here we go. This is a translation by Eugene

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Eoyang: SNOW Northern landscape, thousands of miles around covered by ice, ten thousand miles under snowdrifts. On both sides of the Great Wall,

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I see vast wastelands. Up and down the great river, suddenly the torrents are stilled. Mountains wind around like silver snakes, high headlands ramble about like waxen elephants on the verge of challenging heaven. A sunny day

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is best for watching the red against this whiteness, extraordinary enchantment. The rivers and mountains have this special charm that inspires countless heroes to great deeds. Pity the first sovereign and the martial emperor, they have small

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talent for literature. And the founding fathers of the Tang and Song Dynasties, they lacked both grace and charm. In his own generation, favored by Heaven, Genghis Khan knew only how to bend the bow, bringing down the white vulture. All these great

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leaders are gone now, to single out the men of high character we must look to ourselves, the present. And that translation really simplifies a lot of the original in which these martial emperors and the fathers of Tang and

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Song, their names are really given and what he is doing in this poem, "Snow," he is actually giving us a picture of what China looks like, just looking out across the north and beyond that, on both sides of the the Great Wall. And then he

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goes into the history of China by giving you actual legendary heads of dynasties, which really amount to more than around fifteen hundred years of Chinese history. And what he sees is, "Watching red against the white, extraordinary enchantment," this

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is a more accurate translation of that, it goes like this: Mountains are silver snakes dancing, plateaus are wax-white elephants running, trying to be higher than heaven. Some fine day you will see the land dressed in red wrapped with

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white, flirting, enchanting. That is the problems you have with reading translations of Chinese poetry. They can sound so different sometimes. I'm going to read just that last part again.

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A sunny day is best for watching the red against the white, extraordinary enchantment. The Engles translate that: Some fine day you will see the land dressed in red wrapped in

00:39:45.740 - 00:40:07.170

white, flirting, enchanting. Now I happen to know that the translation done by the Engles is much more accurate. And what Mao was trying to do there is to say look, this land which is all white will be dressed in red,

00:40:07.170 - 00:40:31.950

that is one day it will be communist, but it- then he transforms it into a girl and it is a flirting enchanting girl. That is nowhere in this other- Eoyang's translation, it's as though he missed that metaphor completely. And then when he

00:40:31.950 - 00:40:49.380

goes on, he looks at all of the emperors of the past. And as great as they were, they all had lacks, they all had flaws. And the only time that now we're going to find the perfectly rounded leaders are going to be today, and the heroes are now

00:40:49.380 - 00:41:19.530

and that is the people. So that's how his poetry works with the beautiful landscape on that. In 1956, Mao was sixty-three years old and he went swimming. He swam in the Yangtze, and purportedly swam ten miles across this thirty-two hundred

00:41:19.530 - 00:41:38.970

mile river against tremendous tides. And the legendary Life Magazine even had a picture of him in the middle of the river. We have now gotten various reports that he dunked himself, had the picture taken, and got out, very, very dangerous river.

00:41:39.180 - 00:41:58.110

But he wrote this poem, "Swimming," based on that, and I'll just go through some of this. It should be obvious to you that the water of Jiangxi is marvelously pure, and has been drunk for centuries by the Chinese to make their insides

00:41:58.110 - 00:42:11.890

well, and Wuchang fish is also known as, oh, let's say Washington salmon would be known or something like that. Okay, so here is: SWIMMING by him.

00:42:15.320 - 00:42:37.040

Just drank Changsha water, now eating Wuchang fish. I swim across the thousands of mile long Yangtze, looking as far as the endless Chu dynasty skies to the west, ignoring winds blowing and waves beating. This is better than walking slowly in a

00:42:37.460 - 00:43:05.210

quiet courtyard. Today I am relaxed and free. Confucius said by the river: it always passes and flows away. Boats sail with the wind, Turtle and Snake Mountains stay where they are while great plans grow. A bridge will fly across this river north

00:43:05.210 - 00:43:29.420

to south and a natural barrier will be turned into a road. High in the gorges, a rock dam will rise, cutting off Wu Mountain's cloud and rain. A still lake will climb in the toll gorges. Oh, mountain goddess, I hope she is still well. She will be

00:43:29.420 - 00:43:48.890

startled by the changes to come. And that is the most clear example of Mao the political leader, Mao the communist, Mao going against tradition. And I will just go over it with you. What he- what he's saying is

00:43:48.890 - 00:44:10.640

that he is swimming across this river, everyone knows how hard those tides and rip-tides are in that river. But it is better to be doing that than walking in a quiet courtyard. Why? Because you're challenging nature. Your act of will is opposing nature

00:44:10.670 - 00:44:29.090

and will best it. Confucius -- and that's why I read it this way -- said by the river: the river always flows away. Well, you see, that's that acceptance of nature being all powerful. What Mao was saying is, he's going to change nature. And he

00:44:29.090 - 00:44:46.400

goes on in the second paragraph to say yeah, boats sail with the wind, but the mountains stay where they are, even as great plans grow. And then he talks about two plans: one is a bridge that will actually go over the city, from the city of Wuhan

00:44:46.580 - 00:45:06.200

across the Yangtze River. If you go to China now, you will see this monster bridge, it has been built and has actually bridged this impossible river. The second thing he talks about is a lake will climb in the tall gorges. A rock dam will rise,

00:45:06.230 - 00:45:22.920

cutting off Wu Mountain's cloud and rain. One of the things that was planned during his lifetime was to build one of the greatest edifices in the history of the world, which is a dam that will finally -- I don't say this with

00:45:22.950 - 00:45:41.400

great approval, let me tell you -- will finally dam the Yangtze but keep these unending floods, which have destroyed lives by the thousands all the time, and the food supplies creating the famine. It is being built right now. By 2003, they will start to

00:45:41.400 - 00:46:02.520

fill it with water, that water will fill it with this dam. By 2009, it will eliminate one thousand three hundred some odd villages and towns and some of the great historic landmarks in China, because they will all be hundreds of feet underwater. It

00:46:02.520 - 00:46:21.540

is an amazing undertaking and a terrifying one to us in the United States, who are always thinking about saving land and what can happen to ecosystems when you change them so drastically. The Wu Gorges are, the Wu Mountains, where the

00:46:21.540 - 00:46:40.260

gorges are, are some of the most famous areas in China and some of the most beautiful gorges in the world, they will be filled up with water and be part of the dam. So let me read that again and you can get all of those references now.

00:46:42.840 - 00:47:03.220

SWIMMING Just drank Changsha water, now eating Wuchang fish. I swim across the thousands of miles long Yangtze River, looking as far as the endless Chu dynasty skies in the west, ignoring

00:47:03.220 - 00:47:25.840

winds blowing and waves beating, which is better than walking slowly in a quiet courtyard. Today I am relaxed and free. Confucius said by the river: the river always flows away. Boats sail with the wind, Turtle and Snake Mountain stay, while great

00:47:25.870 - 00:47:46.540

plans grow. A bridge will fly across north to south, a natural barrier will be turned into a road. High in the gorges, a rock dam will rise, cutting off Wu Mountain's cloud and rain, a still lake will climb in the tall gorges. Mountain goddess, I

00:47:46.540 - 00:48:14.470

hope she is still well, we'll be startled at a changed world. And there is a legend that in the Wu Mountains and in the gorges, if the mountain goddess of one of those tributaries goes out in the morning, it will be a misty day; if she goes out in

00:48:14.470 - 00:48:31.660

the evening, it will rain. And it is interesting that this man who is here really talking about such revolutionary concepts rather than even politics, and what he's going to do to nature, should again go back and talk to the goddess and should be

00:48:31.660 - 00:48:53.740

compelled, one whole half of him, to pursue Chinese thought, Chinese folklore, Chinese literature, and Chinese literary forms. It is like the whole tension divides him down the middle and he is two different people at the same time. Let me

00:48:53.740 - 00:49:16.690

read you some more personal poems by him and then read you a reference. Here is, now it is 1959, ten years after the declaration of the People's Republic of China. He is very comfortably in power. You can tell how old he is, it's three

00:49:16.690 - 00:49:33.910

years later, he's around sixty-six years old. And he visits Lu Mountain which is a very, very, very famous mountain where a lot of great poets have marched, there's a wonderful monastery there, and have written great poems. And also Li

00:49:33.910 - 00:49:50.740

Bao and also the person he calls here Tao Yuanming and I'll explain that in a second. Here is a non-political poem as he walks up the mountain: THE ASCENT OF LU MOUNTAIN

00:49:52.010 - 00:50:11.030

The mountain, flying, hovers above the Yangtze: I walk around it in a circle four times, running up its greenness. Cool-eyed, I look over the world beyond the oceans. Hot winds blow showers of rain into the sky river. Clouds cross the Nine

00:50:11.030 - 00:50:33.830

Rivers, Yellow Crane floating. Waves roll past the three Wus, white foam rising. Where is the official Tao Yuan-ming? Is he plowing the field by Peach Blossom Spring? Now, let me explain that. He is high over the Yangtze and in the

00:50:33.830 - 00:50:48.440

Yangtze he is looking -- remember we talked about the three Wu Gorges, the Wu Mountains -- well, those are the waves that he sees rolling past the three Wus which are quite far in the distance. The yellow crane floating is from the

00:50:48.440 - 00:51:08.510

Yellow Crane Pagoda which was founded when a yellow crane flew over, and is a sign of longevity, the holy man had turned into a yellow crane. And these are among the great spots to visit on the Yangtze. But who was Tao Yuan-ming? Well, his

00:51:08.510 - 00:51:35.660

name was also Tao Qian and he was an official during the time of the Warring Kingdoms and the Warring States. And he renounced his position as statesman and retired to Lu Mountain and he is famous for this bit, for this story which every Chinese

00:51:35.660 - 00:51:51.530

schoolboy and schoolgirl knows and is a very, very famous part of Chinese folklore. And it's his rendering, a prose fragment called, "The Peach Blossom Fountain," and if you remember, the last lines of the poem are: "Where is the official Tao

00:51:51.530 - 00:52:13.010

Yuan-ming? Is he plowing the field by Peach Blossom Spring?" THE PEACH BLOSSOM FOUNTAIN by Tao Yuan-ming During the reign of Taiwan of the Tang Dynasty, a fisherman of Wuling was pushing his boat up a stream, forgetting to notice how

00:52:13.010 - 00:52:29.600

far he was going. Suddenly, he came upon a path far as the peach trees that lay for several hundred paces along both sides of the river. There were no other trees, beautiful with a fragrant herbs, and the petals were continually dropping from

00:52:29.600 - 00:52:46.490

the branches. Wondering at the place he had come to, the fisherman went on to see where the forest ended and found that it ended at the source of the river. And there, he saw a mountain with a small cave with a crack of light, gleaming

00:52:46.490 - 00:53:07.100

beyond the end of it. Leaving his boat, the fisherman went through the opening of the cave. At first it was so narrow that he found difficulty in passing through. But after several tens of paces, he suddenly came into broad daylight. He saw the open

00:53:07.100 - 00:53:26.060

plains, the tidy farmsteads and rich fields with delightful lakes, mulberries, bamboos, and such like things. Paths threaded across the fields. He heard dogs barking and cocks crowing. And he saw men and women walking about or working and they wore

00:53:26.060 - 00:53:47.060

clothes exactly like those worn by people outside. The old man had yellow hair, and the young wore their hair in loops, and all seemed joyous and contented. But when they saw the fisherman, they were alarmed, and asked where he came from. He answered

00:53:47.060 - 00:54:03.530

all their questions, they invited him to their homes, and brought wine and killed chickens for supper. Soon, other villages heard of his arrival, and came to inquire about him. Of themselves they said that in an ancient time their forefathers,

00:54:03.530 - 00:54:21.980

in order to avoid the disasters that befell the Qin Dynasty, had fled with their wives and their children and their neighbors into this secluded country. They never came out again. And so they had been separated from the other world, our world. They

00:54:21.980 - 00:54:38.360

asked who was reigning, they had never heard of the Han Dynasty, and still less had they heard of [unidentified] and [unidentified] and the other warring states. The fisherman told them all he knew, and they sighed to hear it, deeply moved.

00:54:39.890 - 00:54:57.080

Each person in turn invited the fishermen into his house, spreading out food and wine. After staying several days, the fisherman bade them farewell. The people of the place said to him, "It is not worthwhile to speak of us to the outsiders"

00:54:58.280 - 00:55:14.090

When he came out of the cave, he found his boat and returned along the way he had come, and all the while he attempted to remember landmarks so he could get back. When he reached the city, he went to the governor and related his discovery to

00:55:14.090 - 00:55:33.860

him. The governor sent some men to go with him. They looked for the landmarks, lost their way, and never found the road back to the place. Lu Cixin, a high-minded scholar of Nan Yang heard of the story, and joyfully made plans to make his journey

00:55:33.860 - 00:55:52.630

there, but nothing came of that either, and soon after Wudi died after an illness. Since that time, no one has even sought the hidden land. And that, of course, is the Chinese version of Eden, of

00:55:52.630 - 00:56:28.030

paradise, of Shangri La, if you will, a place on earth where we can get rid of our woes, and live in simple peace and pleasure. Let me read just several other poems by him. Take a look here. He goes back to Jinggang Mountain in 1965. This

00:56:28.030 - 00:56:50.590

was the mountain where with a band of a hundred men in 1927, he holed up and for several years and developed his tactics with Zhu De. And he visited again of course, the grand old man, the great leader, and he remembers, and this is:

00:56:50.650 - 00:57:10.220

JINGGANG MOUNTAIN 1965 A long time cherished hope of mine, to fly through clouds and once more visit Jinggang Shan, coming a thousand miles to search the old place, all changed now by a new look.

00:57:11.090 - 00:57:32.810

Oriole singing, swallows dancing everywhere, everywhere flowing water bubbling, tall trees climbing into the sky. Huangyangchieh's devious paths once deadly, now they don't even look steep. Wind and thunder were violent, powerful flags

00:57:32.810 - 00:57:55.220

were waving. Now, unshakable on the earth, the passing of thirty years seem a moment's snap of the thumb. Now, we can pick up the moon and the nine-leveled sky and catch turtles in all five oceans. Triumphant return, we do it with talk and laughter.

00:57:55.910 - 00:58:12.400

There is nothing difficult in this world if you can keep climbing. And though that sounds like a nostalgic poem at first, what we really have is that last line, "Nothing is difficult in this

00:58:12.400 - 00:58:36.040

world, if you can keep climbing." There is a smug satisfaction of that which says, "Look, I've won. I have not given up," and there is that very uncharacteristic attitude of the will will win. It unfortunately is also the crying

00:58:36.040 - 00:59:00.390

call, the slogan of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. So, we must remember all that while we were reading this. At any rate, I see that we have but two minutes, and I want to tell you that this has been the Poetry Show and we've been

00:59:00.390 - 00:59:19.380

presenting some of the poems of Mao Zedong and talking about his life. And I should tell you that I met a man who just has come back from China, a very famous writer, and he says that the young people now are quoting Mao Tse-tung's poems more than ever,

00:59:19.380 - 00:59:39.390

or Mao Zedong's poems, more than ever, that he is once more assuming a place of pride, and you'll be interested in why: because many of the Chinese are extremely unhappy with the capitalization of their country. They find that their traditions

00:59:39.390 - 00:59:57.060

are being destroyed, and they also find that there is a new disparity of class happening with the very, very rich entrepreneurs on one side, and the people may be poorer than they ever were before. Although, certainly, that is hard to

00:59:57.060 - 01:00:13.950

imagine but the attitude now is, what is going on? And I find that very interesting because it's the same question I'm asking about what's happening here with those same corporations. Anyway, this is Mort Marcus. I'll be back with

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Dennis Morton next week, and we will be pitching the Poetry Show and have some interesting poems to read to you on Octopush. Look forward to that, we look forward to hearing from you then. Right now, let's get back to some of this beautiful Chinese pipa

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music. See you next week. This is KUSP community sponsored radio FM on your dial for the Monterey Bay. Stay tuned for From the bookshelf hosted by Billie Harris, who tonight brings you James D. Houston,

01:01:12.690 - 01:01:17.280

reading excerpts from his book, "In the Ring of Fire: A Pacific Basin Journey."