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Tang Dynasty Jueju Gao Shi

Song of Yingzhou

營州歌

Yíng Zhōu Gē

Gao Shi's brief portrait of Yingzhou youth follows hunting, rough fur clothing, strong drink, and astonishingly early skill on horseback.

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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

營州少年厭原野，

yíng zhōu shào nián yàn yuán yě

The young men of Yingzhou are seasoned in the open country;

Word meanings — Line 1
  1. 營 yíng Ying
  2. 州 zhōu prefecture
  3. 少 shào young
  4. 年 nián years
  5. 厭 yàn well accustomed to
  6. 原 yuán plain
  7. 野 yě wilds
02

皮裘蒙茸獵城下。

pí qiú méng róng liè chéng xià

in shaggy fur coats they hunt below the city wall.

Word meanings — Line 2
  1. 皮 pí hide
  2. 裘 qiú fur coat
  3. 蒙茸 méng róng shaggy; thickly overgrown
  4. 獵 liè hunt
  5. 城 chéng wall
  6. 下 xià below
03

虜酒千鍾不醉人，

lǔ jiǔ qiān zhōng bú zuì rén

A thousand cups of their frontier wine cannot make them drunk;

Word meanings — Line 3
  1. 虜 lǔ frontier peoples'
  2. 酒 jiǔ wine
  3. 千 qiān thousand
  4. 鍾 zhōng cups
  5. 不 bú not
  6. 醉 zuì intoxicate
  7. 人 rén people
04

胡兒十歲能騎馬。

hú ér shí suì néng qí mǎ

their children can ride a horse at ten.

Word meanings — Line 4
  1. 胡 hú Hu
  2. 兒 ér children
  3. 十 shí ten
  4. 歲 suì years
  5. 能 néng can
  6. 騎 qí ride
  7. 馬 mǎ horses

English translation by PoemWell.

Read the whole poem

Original

營州少年厭原野，

皮裘蒙茸獵城下。

虜酒千鍾不醉人，

胡兒十歲能騎馬。

Translation

The young men of Yingzhou are seasoned in the open country;

in shaggy fur coats they hunt below the city wall.

A thousand cups of their frontier wine cannot make them drunk;

their children can ride a horse at ten.

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?

    營州少年厭原野，

    Pronunciation hint

    nián

    Reveal meaning and translation

    年 — years

    The young men of Yingzhou are seasoned in the open country;

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

    虜酒千鍾不醉人，

    Pronunciation hint

    zhōng

    Reveal meaning and translation

    鍾 — cups

    A thousand cups of their frontier wine cannot make them drunk;

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

    胡兒十歲能騎馬。

    Pronunciation hint

    suì

    Reveal meaning and translation

    歲 — years

    their children can ride a horse at ten.

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: familiarity shown in action

厭 is read in its older sense of being sated or fully accustomed. The translation’s “seasoned” makes this a familiarity with life in the open country. The next line gives the claim something visible: fur coats, 蒙茸 or shaggy in texture, and a hunt below the walls. The youthful riders belong in this particular landscape.

Lines 3–4: two numbers, two kinds of hardiness

千鍾 gives an extravagant amount of drink, while 十歲 sets a strikingly young age for riding. 不醉 and 能騎 make the paired boasts about what the people can do. 虜 and 胡 are the speaker’s historical terms for frontier peoples. The English preserves the scene of admiration without treating its hyperboles as demographic facts.

Form and tone

This seven-character quatrain works as four brisk observations. Its concluding pair balances an exaggerated quantity of wine with an exact-sounding age. The title calls it a song, but the displayed text has a quatrain's four-line shape. A historical tone grid is not supplied.

Historical context

Gao Shi's frontier scene here concerns a local way of life rather than a battle. Clothing, hunting, drinking, and horsemanship carry the portrait. Read the narrator's admiration together with the distance built into his vocabulary; the people described are not given individual voices.

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. “Song of Yingzhou” (營州歌). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .

https://poemwell.org/poems/song-of-yingzhou

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