New Year's Eve Away from Home
除夜作
Chú Yè Zuò
An inn's cold lamp keeps Gao Shi company on New Year's Eve as he imagines home thinking of him and another year whitening his hair.
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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
- 旅 lǚ travel
- 館 guǎn inn
- 寒 hán cold
- 燈 dēng lamp
- 獨 dú alone
- 不 bù not
- 眠 mián sleep
Word meanings — Line 2
- 客 kè traveler
- 心 xīn heart
- 何 hé what
- 事 shì matter
- 轉 zhuǎn turn
- 悽 qī sad
- 然 rán so
Word meanings — Line 3
- 故 gù old
- 鄉 xiāng home
- 今 jīn this
- 夜 yè night
- 思 sī think
- 千 qiān thousand
- 里 lǐ li
Word meanings — Line 4
- 霜 shuāng frost
- 鬢 bìn temples
- 明 míng next
- 朝 zhāo morning
- 又 yòu again
- 一 yì one
- 年 nián year
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
旅館寒燈獨不眠，
客心何事轉悽然。
故鄉今夜思千里，
霜鬢明朝又一年。
Translation
At the inn, alone beside a cold lamp, I cannot sleep.
Why does a traveler's heart grow sadder still?
At home tonight, they think of someone a thousand li away;
by morning these frosted temples will have gained another year.
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.
-
Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?
旅館寒燈獨不眠，
Pronunciation hint
dēng
Reveal meaning and translation
燈 — lamp
At the inn, alone beside a cold lamp, I cannot sleep.
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
故鄉今夜思千里，
Pronunciation hint
yè
Reveal meaning and translation
夜 — night
At home tonight, they think of someone a thousand li away;
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
霜鬢明朝又一年。
Pronunciation hint
zhāo
Reveal meaning and translation
朝 — morning
by morning these frosted temples will have gained another year.
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
Lines 1–2: an ordinary room on a difficult night
旅館 is the inn and 寒燈 the lamp felt as cold. Together they let the scene be lit and still inhospitable. 獨 and 不眠 bring the sleepless speaker into the room. 何事 asks why 客心, a traveler’s heart, has become sadder. The poem names the change before offering the occasion for it.
Line 3: imagined attention comes from home
故鄉 stands for the people at home in this reading. The line makes them think of someone 千里 away. The English supplies “they” for that reading of the compressed grammar. The effect is to give loneliness two sides: the speaker can imagine being missed on the same night that the speaker misses home.
Line 4: tomorrow adds a year
霜鬢 uses frost to picture graying temples. 明朝 means the coming morning, and 又 makes it one more year. 今夜 in the third line and 明朝 in the fourth are only hours apart, but the calendar changes between them. The final line gives that small passage of time a visible place on a body.
Form and tone
The seven-character quatrain begins with the solitary traveler and ends with time passing across his face. Its third line briefly relocates the imagined viewpoint to home. No historical tone grid is supplied; the pinyin is modern standard Mandarin.
Historical context
New Year's Eve gives this homesickness poem a precise threshold: the present night is already turning toward tomorrow. Gao Shi does not tell us which relatives are thinking of him. Leaving them unnamed makes the imagined bond concrete without inventing a family scene that the text does not provide.
Sources
Chinese text follows the Sibu Congkan transcription of Gao Changshi ji, juan 8. Variant written forms are normalized to current traditional characters (including 巳 to 己 in 知己, 鴈 to 雁, 郷 to 鄉, 鬂 to 鬢, 羗 to 羌, and 猒 to 厭); wording is retained. Punctuation is editorial. The English translation and 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
Gao Shi. “New Year's Eve Away from Home” (除夜作). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/gao-shi-new-years-eve
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.