Remembering My Brothers on the Double Ninth
九月九日憶山東兄弟
Jiǔ yuè jiǔ rì yì Shāndōng xiōng dì
Wang Wei’s Double Ninth poem in Chinese, pinyin, and English: an imagined family gathering turns the distant speaker into the person missing from the group.
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Read the original and its translation together. Open a line’s word meanings for a closer look.
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.
Word meanings — Line 1
- 獨 dú alone
- 在 zài in
- 異鄉 yì xiāng place away from home
- 為 wéi be
- 異客 yì kè stranger
Word meanings — Line 2
- 每逢 měi féng whenever meeting
- 佳節 jiā jié festival
- 倍 bèi twice as much
- 思親 sī qīn miss family
Word meanings — Line 3
- 遙知 yáo zhī know from afar
- 兄弟 xiōng dì brothers
- 登高 dēng gāo climb a height
- 處 chù place
Word meanings — Line 4
- 遍 biàn all
- 插 chā insert or wear
- 茱萸 zhū yú zhuyu sprigs
- 少 shǎo be missing
- 一人 yì rén one person
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
獨在異鄉為異客，
每逢佳節倍思親。
遙知兄弟登高處，
遍插茱萸少一人。
Translation
Alone in a strange place, I am a stranger here.
Whenever a festival comes, I miss my family twice as much.
Far away, I picture where my brothers climb the heights,
all wearing sprigs of zhuyu, with one person missing.
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.
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Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?
獨在異鄉為異客，
Pronunciation hint
yì xiāng
Reveal meaning and translation
異鄉 — place away from home
Alone in a strange place, I am a stranger here.
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Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
遙知兄弟登高處，
Pronunciation hint
yáo zhī
Reveal meaning and translation
遙知 — know from afar
Far away, I picture where my brothers climb the heights,
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Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
遍插茱萸少一人。
Pronunciation hint
zhū yú
Reveal meaning and translation
茱萸 — zhuyu sprigs
all wearing sprigs of zhuyu, with one person missing.
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.
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Line-by-line notes
A stranger in two senses
獨 establishes being alone; the repeated 異 then makes both the place and the speaker’s position within it unfamiliar. 親 means kin or family, not only parents. 每逢 broadens the immediate festival into a repeated experience: special occasions intensify the thought of people elsewhere. 倍 expresses that intensification rather than a measurable emotional ratio.
The title names the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, the Double Ninth festival. It is distinct from Mid-Autumn. Climbing heights and wearing 茱萸, zhuyu sprigs, belong to the gathering imagined here; 茱萸 is not the chrysanthemum in Meng Haoran’s farm poem.
The missing person seen from home
遙知 is a knowing imagined across distance, not proof that a message has arrived. The viewpoint moves toward the brothers and their shared activity. 遍, “all,” almost completes the gathering, then 少一人, “one person missing,” opens a gap in it.
That missing person is the speaker. Instead of simply repeating “I miss my family,” he imagines how his own absence would appear among them. The poem never directly quotes the brothers saying that they miss him; this is his construction of their scene.
山東 in the title is an older geographical designation and should not be mapped uncritically to the modern province. For another family separation on a different festival, compare Su Shi’s Mid-Autumn lyric.
The one person at both ends
Compare 獨 at the very beginning with 一人 at the close. The traveler first feels one person's loneliness directly. Then the same person appears as a vacancy in a group whose members are otherwise performing an action together. The English “one person missing” keeps that vacancy visible without inserting a second explicit “I.”
Form and tone
The seven-character quatrain turns after a statement that sounds general: every festival deepens longing. The final pair makes that feeling concrete through a missing person among people performing the same action. 親 and 人 provide the even-line rhyme.
See the quatrain guide for the form. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin pronunciation; no unverified historical tone grid is supplied.
Historical context
A recurring festival makes absence visible because familiar gatherings can be imagined so precisely. The poem gives neither a letter nor an actual reunion; its movement happens through the solitary speaker’s reconstruction of a family scene.
Continue with Wang Wei or the homesickness shelf.
Read this poem alongside the contrasting selections in our homesickness reading guide.
Sources
Chinese text compared with 九月九日憶山東兄弟, public transcription on Wikisource. Punctuation is editorial; the English translation and reading notes 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
Wang Wei. “Remembering My Brothers on the Double Ninth” (九月九日憶山東兄弟). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/double-ninth-remembering-my-brothers
Credit the poet for the Chinese original and PoemWell for this translation and commentary. Use the permanent page link above; source editions are listed separately.