Spring Snow

Han Yu
Translated from the Chinese by Jonathan Stalling

new year's           comes but           blooms don't growMarch nears      sur-prised           grass sprouts growyet white             snow thinks       spring's come lateand falls              through trees     like blooms blow     春 雪     韩愈新 年         都 未       有 芳 花二 月         初 驚       見 草 芽白 雪         卻 嫌       春 色 晚故 穿         庭 樹       作 飛 花 

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Han Yu (Chinese: 韓愈; 768 – 25 December 824), courtesy name Tuizhi (Chinese: 退之), was a Chinese prose writer, poet, and government official of the Tang dynasty who significantly influenced the development of Neo-Confucianism. Described as “comparable in stature to Dante, Shakespeare or Goethe” for his influence on the Chinese literary tradition, Han Yu stood for strong central authority in politics and orthodoxy in cultural matters. He is often considered to be among China’s finest prose writers.

Jonathan Stalling (Chinese: 石江山,思道林; born June 24, 1975) is an American poet, scholar, editor, translator, professor, and inventor who works at the intersection of English and Chinese. He is the Harold J & Ruth Newman Chair for US-China Issues and Co-Director of the Institute for US-China Issues, and is Professor of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is also the affiliate English professor at the University of Oklahoma where he serves as the founding curator of the Chinese Literature Translation Archive (CLTA), and as a founding editor of Chinese Literature Today (CLT) journal and as the editor of the CLT book series published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

December 2013, Issue 22

Hong Kong

Founding Co-Editors
Tammy Lai-Ming Ho
Jeff Zroback

Translation Editor
Lucas Klein

Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, founded in 2007, a decade after the handover, is the first Hong Kong-based international English-language free-access online literary journal; it is dedicated to publishing quality poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, reviews and photography & art. Cha has a strong focus on Asian-themed creative work and work done by Asian writers/artists. It publishes established and emerging writers/artists from around the world.

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