沁园春 (Spring in the Qin Garden)

[khiemtran]

Take a look at this Chinese restaurant in Hurstville. As you can see, the English name is Little Chilli House, and so you might expect a place with lots of chilli in the food. But what do the three characters in the Chinese name mean?



First, here's the simplified version, which appears at the bottom of the sign overhanging the street...



The first character, 沁, is pronounced Qìn and means something like "to ooze, soak in or penetrate".
The second character, 园, is pronounced Yuán and can mean garden or park.
The third character, 春, is pronounced Chūn and means Spring.

The characters in the neon sign and in the seal-like section to the left of the neon are actually the same. They're just written using the tradition style.



So, Oozing Garden Spring. What does this have to do with chillies? Well, not much as it turns out...

First of all, a better translation would be "Spring in the Qin Gardens", and it's a reference to a fabled garden in Qinshui, which was created for a Princess Liu Zhi during the Eastern Han Dynasty. There's a story about how the Princess was forced to sell the garden at a low price to a rival of the Emperor, but I'm not clear on the details. There seems to be a lot on the Chinese internet, but it's beyond my reading level to figure it out. The Qin Gardens would have been in modern Henan, the cradle of Chinese civilization.

Now, this garden appears in a lot of poetic references, but the most significant one here is in the title of a cípái (詞牌), a sort of "tune" that is used for providing a meter for a form of traditional Chinese poetry known as Cí. The cípái dictates not only the rhythm, but also the rhymes and tonal patterns. "Spring in the Qin Garden" is a cípái that has been used by some of the greats of Chinese literature, including Du Fu in the Tang Dynasty and Su Shi in the Song Dynasty.

But that still isn't the most obvious association of that phrase...

One of the poets who used that particular cípái happened to be one Máo Zédōng, who wrote at least two famous poems using it. The most famous is Qin Yuan Chun: Snow and this is where most mainland Chinese will know the phrase from.

From wikipedia:

Look at the landscape of northern China：
The vast frozen land is covered with ice．
And the snow flits far-flung in the sky．
On both sides of the Great Wall．
The empty wilderness survives；
From upriver to downstream，
The roaring currents disappear．
The mountains dance like silver snake，
The highlands slither like huge wax elephants.
Vying with the sky for height．
When comes the sunny day，
The land is dressed up with bright sun and clear white snow，
What a gorgeous and attractive scene it is!

Such a beautiful land Has infatuated countless heroes．
However Pioneer emperors Qin Shihuang and Han Wudi
Were men lack of poem's grace talent；
Great emperors Tang Taizong and Song Taizu
Were short of spirit and strength．
That proud son of Heaven, Genghis Khan
Only enjoys shooting the big Hawk with his bow．
Alas，They are now gone as history：
The real great hero, Is coming up now．

If you take a look at this link, showing Mao's own calligraphy, you can see the same three characters at the far right, indicating the cípái used.

When I asked three friends about the name of the restaurant, all three of them said Mao would be their first association [1] and none of them knew off-hand the story of the Qin Garden and the princess.

So, after all that, we've gone from the Han to the Tang and Song and finally ended at Mao Zedong, with poetry all the way. Does "The Little Chilli House" have quite the same allure?

Next week: is that fish or squirrel you've just ordered?





[1] One friend did say that it was a very common name for a restaurant in eastern China and as such likely to be unoriginal.

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

So, after all that, we've gone from the Han to the Tang and Song

Well I for one was left wondering whether the "Qin" is the same as that of the Qin Dynasty, but Wikipedia says that's 秦, not 沁, so it looks like they're different.

(Also, on closer reading I see you spell it once "Qìn", so presumably the tone is different.)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, 秦 is pronounced with a rising tone and 沁 with a falling tone. But it's also quite common to have lots of words in Chinese with identical pronunciations. My iphone dictionary lists thirty-four words that can be pronounced "qin" and there are only four tones to go around...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Whoa Mao! Vaunting his own ability much? "Yeah, there was Qin Shihuang and Genghis Khan and Han Wudi, but ain't none of them as dope as me."

He should have been a rapper.

I like his images, though--mountains dancing like silver snakes and highlands slithering like wax elephants--I wonder if those are original with him or set tropes/phrases.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Perhaps he could be Mao-Z (or maybe Z-Dong)...!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Heh, Mao-Z and Z-Dong are making me think of "Mairzy Doats."