Stone City
石頭城
Shí tóu chéng
Tides and moonlight revisit a ruined capital. Watch the landscape continue its familiar movements while the city's former power remains absent.
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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
- 山 shān mountains
- 圍 wéi surround
- 故 gù former
- 國 guó capital
- 周 zhōu all
- 遭 zāo around
- 在 zài remain
Word meanings — Line 2
- 潮 cháo tide
- 打 dǎ strikes
- 空 kōng empty
- 城 chéng city
- 寂 jì lonely
- 寞 mò silent
- 回 huí returns
Word meanings — Line 3
- 淮 huái Huai
- 水 shuǐ water
- 東 dōng east
- 邊 biān side
- 舊 jiù old
- 時 shí times
- 月 yuè moon
Word meanings — Line 4
- 夜 yè night
- 深 shēn deep
- 還 hái still
- 過 guò crosses
- 女牆 nǚ qiáng parapet
- 來 lái comes
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
山圍故國周遭在，
潮打空城寂寞回。
淮水東邊舊時月，
夜深還過女牆來。
Translation
Mountains still surround the old capital on every side;
the tide strikes the empty city and withdraws alone.
East of the Qinhuai, the moon of former days
still crosses the parapet deep into the night.
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?
山圍故國周遭在，
Pronunciation hint
guó
Reveal meaning and translation
國 — capital
Mountains still surround the old capital on every side;
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
淮水東邊舊時月，
Pronunciation hint
biān
Reveal meaning and translation
邊 — side
East of the Qinhuai, the moon of former days
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
夜深還過女牆來。
Pronunciation hint
nǚ qiáng
Reveal meaning and translation
女牆 — parapet
still crosses the parapet deep into the night.
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 →Self-check at your own pace. No score or progress is saved. Open only the answers you want included when printing.
Line-by-line notes
Lines 1–2 — A city enclosed and struck
故國 here points to the old capital. 周遭 and 在 give the mountains their encircling persistence. The tide strikes with 打 and then withdraws, alone, from 空城. The English keeps that motion around a center made conspicuous by its emptiness.
Lines 3–4 — What still comes over the wall
淮水 belongs to the Qinhuai landscape, and 女牆 is the city’s low parapet. The third line calls the moon 舊時, from former days, giving a familiar sight the long reach of memory. 還過 then describes what it still does, crossing the wall late at night. Read the returns together. The tide goes out again while the moon comes over, and both motions carry on through a city whose earlier occupants remain outside the verse.
Form and tone
Four seven-character lines make a jueju. The opening moves around the city horizontally; the last couplet follows the moon above it. 在 and 還 carry persistence, while 空 and 寂寞 register absence. This pattern gives the poem its argument without a final moral sentence.
See jueju for the larger formal pattern. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin pronunciation; a historical level/oblique grid is not inferred from those modern tones.
Historical context
Stone City was a fortified site in the old southern capital region. The poem belongs with Liu Yuxi’s retrospective writing about Jinling. “Empty” is a concentrated poetic description of lost political grandeur, not a demographic claim that every nearby household had vanished.
Continue with Liu Yuxi and the memory reading path. Compare Wuyi Lane and Mooring on the Qinhuai using the reading connections below.
Sources
石頭城 (劉禹錫) — Chinese text. Checked against the linked Wikisource transcription. The displayed traditional text follows this reading. Punctuation and line breaks are editorial. Translation, glosses, 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
Liu Yuxi. “Stone City” (石頭城). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/stone-city
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.