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Tang Dynasty Jueju Zhang Ji

A Scene at Chang Gate

閶門即事

Chāng Mén Jí Shì

Zhang Ji looks from Suzhou's gate toward fields overgrown after farmers are recruited for war, and asks how many hearths still smoke.

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About the text and pronunciation

The simplified view changes character forms, not the edition. Notes and sources retain the cited text.

The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.

Word by word, in the order of the line. A gloss is a crib. It is not the translation.

01

耕夫召募逐樓船，

gēng fū zhào mù zhú lóu chuán

Farmers, called up, go off with the towered warships;

Word meanings — Line 1
  1. 耕 gēng plough
  2. 夫 fū men
  3. 召 zhào summon
  4. 募 mù recruit
  5. 逐 zhú follow
  6. 樓 lóu tower
  7. 船 chuán ships
02

春草青青萬頃田。

chūn cǎo qīng qīng wàn qǐng tián

spring grass greens a vast expanse of fields.

Word meanings — Line 2
  1. 春 chūn spring
  2. 草 cǎo grass
  3. 青 qīng green
  4. 青 qīng green
  5. 萬 wàn ten thousand
  6. 頃 qǐng qing
  7. 田 tián fields
03

試上吳門窺郡郭，

shì shàng wú mén kuī jùn guō

Climb the gate of Wu and look out over the city:

Word meanings — Line 3
  1. 試 shì try
  2. 上 shàng ascend
  3. 吳 wú Wu
  4. 門 mén gate
  5. 窺 kuī look
  6. 郡 jùn prefectural
  7. 郭 guō city walls
04

清明幾處有新煙。

qīng míng jǐ chù yǒu xīn yān

at Qingming, how many places send up fresh smoke?

Word meanings — Line 4
  1. 清明 qīng míng Qingming festival
  2. 幾 jǐ how many
  3. 處 chù places
  4. 有 yǒu have
  5. 新 xīn new
  6. 煙 yān smoke

English translation by PoemWell.

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Original

耕夫召募逐樓船，

春草青青萬頃田。

試上吳門窺郡郭，

清明幾處有新煙。

Translation

Farmers, called up, go off with the towered warships;

spring grass greens a vast expanse of fields.

Climb the gate of Wu and look out over the city:

at Qingming, how many places send up fresh smoke?

Try it from memory

After reading, recall the underlined word or phrase in each line. Say its meaning before opening the answer. These prompts use the text edition printed above.

  1. Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?

    耕夫召募逐樓船，

    Pronunciation hint

    mù

    Reveal meaning and translation

    募 — recruit

    Farmers, called up, go off with the towered warships;

  2. Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?

    試上吳門窺郡郭，

    Pronunciation hint

    mén

    Reveal meaning and translation

    門 — gate

    Climb the gate of Wu and look out over the city:

  3. Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?

    清明幾處有新煙。

    Pronunciation hint

    qīng míng

    Reveal meaning and translation

    清明 — Qingming festival

    at Qingming, how many places send up fresh smoke?

One more question: what changes?

Compare the opening and closing lines. What changes in the scene, the speaker’s attention, or the feeling? Choose a Chinese word as evidence, then compare your reading with the notes. More than one answer may be reasonable.

Line-by-line notes →

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Line-by-line notes

Lines 1–2 · Recruitment changes what grows

耕夫 names the people by the work they do in the fields. 召募 and 逐 take them away with the 樓船, large warships with raised superstructures. The next line looks at the land after that departure. 青青 is ordinarily an abundant green, but here what is growing on the fields is 春草. The field measure 頃 gives the impression a vast extent in 萬頃.

Lines 3–4 · What can be seen from the gate

試 invites a person to go up and look. 窺 makes the raised viewpoint an attempt to catch sight of something in the city. 清明 gives a reason to look for 新煙, the renewed hearth smoke associated with the end of the Cold Food observance. 幾處 leaves the number open. Just as green grass made the farmers' absence visible from the fields, the scarcity suggested by the question makes households perceptible through the signs they give off.

Form and tone

The seven-character quatrain links an explicit human cause to two outward signs of loss. Its final question asks the reader to inspect the scene. No historical tone grid is supplied, and the modern pinyin does not represent Tang sound categories.

Historical context

The gate places this poem in the Suzhou region, far from the stereotypical desert frontier. Zhang Ji shows how military recruitment can reshape ordinary agricultural life. The reading does not require identifying an exact campaign from the four lines; their social relationship is already plain.

Sources

Chinese text follows the main readings of Quan Tang shi, juan 242, Zhang Ji (張繼). 却 is normalized to 卻 where it occurs. Punctuation is editorial. English translations and annotations are original to PoemWell.

English translation, gloss, and notes by PoemWell. The translation is original to this site.

The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.

Updated .

Cite this reading

Zhang Ji. “A Scene at Chang Gate” (閶門即事). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .

https://poemwell.org/poems/a-scene-at-chang-gate

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