Journey Through Time: A Sweet Suzhou Roadtrip with Tanghulu, Poetry, and Song Dynasty Culture
Sweet Suzhou Saturday roadtrip, with traditional tanghulu and a cultural performance of this Song Dynasty poem by Li Qingzhao, ancient China’s most famous female poet, that went completely over their heads.
Ci, or lyric, is a poetry form based on popular songs from court. The poems are of uneven line length but adhere to tonal and rhyming patterns based upon the original tune. The titles referred to songs already lost at the time the Song dynasty poets wrote, but the original tunes were used as patterns that would be "filled in" with lyrics and provide an indication to the educated Chinese reader of the structure, if not the content, of the representation.
满地黄花堆积。憔悴损，如今有谁堪摘。
The ground is covered with piles of crysenthemums, withered and wasted - who would pick them now?
守着窗儿，独自怎生得黑。
I keep by the window, alone, how does one thicken the darkness that won’t quicken?
梧桐更兼细雨，到黄昏、点点滴滴
The beech tree on top of a fine rain drizzle,
As twilight grizzles, drip after drop
这次第，怎一个愁字了得。
In such a situation, how do I grasp sorrow, a grief beyond belief.
When I was about the same age as the boys, I had my first and only taste of tanghulu at this repro movie studio set for low-budget wuxia series in 1980s Singapore, called Tang Dynasty City. It was a slightly laughable place with fake, generic temple and fortress installations, zip lines to simulate flying warriors and actors dressed as costume characters. How lucky the boys are to have tanghulu in an actual historical water town.
