# Autumn in My Old Capital



## xiaoman (Jan 16, 2016)

(I would like to share a translated prose with friends here. Thank you for your clicks! )


 Autumn in My Old Capital

 Writer: Yu Dafu (China)

 Translator: Xu Yingcai  (America)


 Autumn, no matter where it 
 happens, is always appealing, but autumn in Northern China, especially, is less 
 diluted, quieter, and more melancholy. It is merely for the purpose of fully 
 tasting these “flavors”—the autumnal flavors of my old capital—that I braved the 
 long trip from Hangzhou to Qingdao and then to Peiping. 

 Autumn, of 
 course, also happens in the south, but in a southern autumn, the flora is slower 
 to wither, the air is denser with moisture, the sky is lighter in color, and it 
 is more often rainy than windy. Muddling along as a loner, engulfed among the 
 residents of the near southern cities like Suzhou, Shanghai, or Hangzhou, or the 
 far southern ones like Xiamen, Hong Kong, or Guangzhou, I can only feel a little 
 bit of the pureness and melancholy of autumn. There, I have never seen enough of 
 the views of autumn, tasted enough of flavors of autumn, or explored enough of 
 the poetic imagery of autumn. Autumn is neither a famous flower nor a luscious 
 wine. That state of half-blooming and half-intoxication is not appropriate to 
 the understanding of the season.

 It has been more than a decade since I 
 last experienced autumn in the north. In the south, every year when autumn came, 
 I would always miss the reed catkins at the Joyous Pavilion, the willow 
 silhouettes by the Fishing Tower, the chirping of insects in the West Hills, the 
 midnight moon above the Jade Spring, and the chiming of the bells from the 
 Poolside Mulberry Temple. In Beijing, however, even though you stay at home—say, 
 you reside in a dilapidated rented house in the imperial city, with a sea of 
 inhabitants, and you get up in the morning, making a bowl of strong tea, and sit 
 in a spot facing the entire yard—you can also see the azure color high in the 
 sky and hear the noise the domesticated pigeons make when they fly under the 
 blue sky. From beneath a locust tree, counting strip after strip of sunbeams 
 dripping down from the east through the foliage or quietly looking at the blue 
 flowers of trumpet-shaped morning glories rooted in the middle of a broken wall, 
 you will also automatically get a deep sense of autumn. Speaking of morning 
 glories, I think the blue or white flowers are the best, the purple-blacks come 
 next, and the light-reds rank last. If there are a few long, thin autumn grasses 
 loosely spread out under them to set them off, so much the better.

 The 
 northern locust tree is yet another scenic element that would make people think 
 of autumn. When you get up in the morning, you will see stamens and 
 pistils—which look like flowers, but are actually not—all over the ground. When 
 you step on them, you don’t hear anything or smell anything; you only have an 
 extremely light and soft feeling of contact. After the street cleaner sweeps the 
 tree-shaded ground, you will see strip after strip of sweeping marks on the 
 earth. They look delicate and inspire a sense of leisure, and your subconscious 
 mind will even register a little feeling of desolation. This is perhaps where 
 lies the profound meaning of the ancient poetic line that “A falling leaf from a 
 Chinese parasol manifests the arrival of autumn.” 

The lingering, weak 
 chirping of the autumnal harvest flies is even more characteristic of the north. 
 Because there are trees everywhere and the houses are not very tall in Peiping, 
 you can hear the harvest flies wherever you go. But in the south, you won’t be 
 able to hear anything unless you go to the suburbs or take a trip into the 
 hills. In Peiping, harvest flies, which are as common as crickets or mice, are 
 like house pets for every family.

 Don’t forget the autumnal rain! The 
 autumnal rain in the north seems to fall in a way more distinctive, more 
 flavorsome, and more akin to rain than that in the south.

 Under the grey 
 sky, after an abrupt cool wind comes the pitter-patter of rain. Soon after the 
 brisk rain is over, the clouds begin to slowly roll to the west, the sky starts 
 to turn blue again, and the sun pops its face out once more. A tobacco pipe 
 between his lips, a leisurely townsman, clad in a thick lined jacket or a dark 
 blue padded coat, would step out of the shade of the rain-washed skew bridge and 
 stand under a bridgehead tree; when he sees someone he knows, he would let out a 
 light sigh and say, in a slow and leisurely tone,

“Gosh, it’sss really 
 getting chilly—” (Emphasizing the progressive “s” by highly pitching and 
 dragging it.)

“Exactly! Hence, the saying ‘Each burstr of autumnal rain 
 adds a burstr of chilliness!’”

When northerners pronounce the word 
“burst,” it always sounds like “burstr.” But, in terms of cadence, this 
 distortion in pronunciation has the benefit of creating an accidental 
 rhyme.

 When autumn comes, the fruit trees in the north also boast of an 
 unusual scene. The date trees should be the first kind. They grow 
 everywhere—around the corners of houses, on walls, by outhouses, next to kitchen 
 cabins. When the dates, like olives or pigeon eggs, begin to show their 
 light-green and light-yellow colors amid the small oval-shaped leaves, the 
 autumn season has reached its prime. By the time the leaves have fallen and the 
 dates themselves have finished turning red, the northwest wind will start to 
 blow, and this will then make the north a dusty and muddy world. The best period 
 of an undiluted autumn in the north is at the transitional period between July 
 and August, when dates, persimmons, and grapes are almost completely ripe. These 
 are the golden days of the year.

 Some critics say that all Chinese 
 scholars, men of letters, and especially poets, have a strong propensity for 
 decadence and that’s why quite a number of Chinese poems eulogize autumn. But 
 don’t foreign poets do the same? I have neither delved much into foreign poetry 
 nor want to make a list that will turn my pure prose into a piece of 
 quotation-riddled lyric prose about autumn, but if you flip through a collection 
 of poetry from Britain, Germany, France, Italy, etc. or through a poetry 
 anthology from each of these countries, you are bound to see much eulogizing and 
 bemoaning of the season.

 The best-written and most exquisite parts of the 
 voluminous idyllic pastoral poetry or of the verses on the four seasons produced 
 by famous poets are those that describe autumn. This clearly reveals that all 
 sentient animals and appreciative humans share an identical mentality toward the 
 autumn season, which always gives them a deep, remote, serious, serious, and 
 melancholic feeling. I believe that when autumn comes, not only poets, but even 
 prison inmates, have deep, uncontrollable emotions. When it comes to autumn, no 
 differences exist between nations, ethnicities or social classes. Since there is 
 a term “autumnal scholar” in the Chinese language and some popular “autumnal 
 verses” such as Ode to Autumnal Sounds by Ouyang Xiu and Ode to the Red Cliff by 
 Su Shi, one would feel that the Chinese literati have a more profound 
 relationship with autumn than their western counterparts. But this profound 
 flavor of autumn, especially the profound flavor of a Chinese autumn, can only 
 be tasted in the north.

 Autumn in the south, of course, also has its 
 special characteristics. Take, for instance, the bright moon over the 
 Twenty-fourth Bridge, the autumnal tides in the Qiantang River, the cool mist on 
 Mount Putuo, the late lotus in the Litchi Fruit Bay, etc. But none of these is 
 deep in color, and none leaves a permanent aftertaste. Comparing a southern 
 autumn to a northern autumn is like comparing yellow wine to white spirits, rice 
 gruel to steamed bread, perch to big crab, or dogs to camels.

 If I could 
 keep autumn—this autumn of northern China—from leaving, I would trade two thirds 
 of my lifetime for a life only a third as long but spent entirely in 
 autumn.

 For the original Chinese version please click:  http://www.backchina.com/blog/358517...#ixzz3xE9z1o00


 Introduction of the Writer:  *Yu Dafu* (simplified Chinese: *郁达夫;* traditional Chinese: 郁達夫; pinyin: _Yù Dáfū_; Wade–Giles: _Yu Ta-fu_) (December 7, 1896 – September 17, 1945). Born in Fuyang, Zhejiang province, was a modern Chinese short story writer and poet.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu_Dafu

 Introduction of the Translator: *  Xu Yingcai 徐英才*, a professor from DelPaul University.  His books include: 
【英译中国当代美文选(汉英对照)】是我计划要读的：http://nxtmarket.info/item/520814806971 


【英译中国经典散文选（汉英对照）】链接：http://nxtmarket.info/item/520814806971 http://www.amazon.cn/%E5%9B%BE%E4%B9%A6/dp/B00MTI5CKO

【英译唐宋八大家散文精选(汉英对照)】链接： 
http://www.amazon.cn/%E8%8B%B1%E ... 
 80%89/dp/B0060RVC2M


 In September, 2015, Professor Xu's books were given to Lincoln High School by the President of the People's Republic of China,  Mr. Xi Jingping, as gifts for learning translation, Chinese culture and Chinese language.​


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## Hairball (Feb 1, 2016)

This is quite interesting. Thank you for this!


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## Firemajic (Feb 2, 2016)

xiaoman..This was completely fabulous! I enjoyed all the different comparisons of Autumn in different places, and all the things that were described.. Thank you for sharing ...


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