Magnolia Hollow
辛夷塢
Xīnyí wù
Magnolia blossoms open and fall in a ravine without an audience. Read the Chinese, pinyin, word meanings, and original English translation.
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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
- 木末 mù mò tree tips
- 芙蓉花 fú róng huā lotus-like flowers
Word meanings — Line 2
- 山中 shān zhōng in the mountains
- 發 fā open
- 紅萼 hóng è red calyxes
Word meanings — Line 3
- 澗戶 jiàn hù ravine entrance
- 寂 jì quiet
- 無人 wú rén no one present
Word meanings — Line 4
- 紛紛 fēn fēn in profusion
- 開 kāi open
- 且 qiě and
- 落 luò fall
English translation by PoemWell.
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Original
木末芙蓉花，
山中發紅萼。
澗戶寂無人，
紛紛開且落。
Translation
At the tips of trees, flowers like lotus blossoms
open their red cups in the mountains.
The ravine's entrance is quiet, with no one there;
in profusion, they open and fall.
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?
木末芙蓉花，
Pronunciation hint
mù mò
Reveal meaning and translation
木末 — tree tips
At the tips of trees, flowers like lotus blossoms
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
澗戶寂無人，
Pronunciation hint
jiàn hù
Reveal meaning and translation
澗戶 — ravine entrance
The ravine's entrance is quiet, with no one there;
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
紛紛開且落。
Pronunciation hint
fēn fēn
Reveal meaning and translation
紛紛 — in profusion
in profusion, they open and fall.
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 · Lotus-shaped flowers above the ground
辛夷 in the title names magnolia. 木末 takes the eye to the tips of trees, so 芙蓉 compares their blossoms to lotus flowers by appearance. The English makes that comparison explicit with “like.” 發 brings the flowers into bloom, and 紅萼 singles out the red calyx. “Red cups” evokes the conspicuous shape for a reader who may not know the botanical term.
Lines 3–4 · A cycle without a witness in view
澗戶 can be the opening of the ravine. 寂無人 makes that space quiet and unoccupied, giving the flowers no human audience in the scene. The last line lets 紛紛, “in profusion,” carry into both 開 and 落. The conjunction 且 binds the two processes in a single view. A reader who pauses after 開 can hear how quickly the poem moves from flowering to falling. The English keeps the two verbs side by side, leaving the judgment of that passage to the reader.
Form and tone
The five-character quatrain moves from a close botanical image to an unoccupied space and an ongoing process. 萼 and 落 have a historical rhyme relationship. The last line compresses a duration into the paired verbs 開 and 落.
See the quatrain guide for the form. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin pronunciation; no unverified historical tone grid is supplied.
Historical context
This is one of Wang Wei’s Wang River collection poems. Its shared landscape does not make all the pieces express the same mood: here the flowering has no promised visitor and no explicit human sorrow.
Continue with Wang Wei or the nature shelf.
Sources
Chinese text compared with 辛夷塢, 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. “Magnolia Hollow” (辛夷塢). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/magnolia-hollow
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.