The Ballad of the War Chariots
English translation and interpretation are being reviewed.
马萧萧，
行人弓箭各在腰。
耶娘妻子走相送，
尘埃不见咸阳桥。
牵衣顿足拦道哭，
哭声直上干云霄。
道旁过者问行人，
行人但云点行频。
或从十五北防河，
便至四十西营田。
去时里正与裹头，
归来头白还戍边。
边庭流血成海水，
武皇开边意未已。
君不闻汉家山东二百州，
千村万落生荆杞。
纵有健妇把锄犁，
禾生陇亩无东西。
况复秦兵耐苦战，
被驱不异犬与鸡。
长者虽有问，
役夫敢申恨？
且如今年冬，
未休关西卒。
县官急索租，
租税从何出？
信知生男恶，
反是生女好。
生女犹得嫁比邻，
生男埋没随百草。
君不见，
青海头，
古来白骨无人收。
新鬼烦冤旧鬼哭，
天阴雨湿声啾啾！
English translation
Chariots rumble, horses neigh; every marcher has bow and arrows at his waist.
Fathers and mothers, wives and children run to see them off; the dust hides Xianyang Bridge.
They clutch at clothes, stamp their feet, block the road and wail; the wailing rises straight to the clouds.
One passing by the roadside asks a marcher; the marcher says only that the call-ups come too often.
Some at fifteen go north to guard the river; then at forty are sent west to till the garrison farms.
When they left, the village head bound their heads for them; returning, heads white, they still garrison the frontier.
At the border the blood flows to make a sea; the Martial Emperor's will to widen the realm has not yet ceased.
Have you not heard — of the two hundred prefectures of Han east of the mountains, a thousand villages and ten thousand hamlets grown up in thorn and bramble?
Even where strong women take hoe and plough, the grain grows in the fields without order, no rows either way.
And moreover the men of Qin bear hard fighting; they are driven no differently from dogs and chickens.
You, sir, may ask, but a conscript dares not speak his grievance.
Take this very winter: the Guanxi troops have still not been stood down.
The magistrates press hard for taxes — from where is the rent to come?
Truly I know now that bearing a son is bad; better far to bear a daughter.
A daughter at least can be married to a neighbor; a son is buried away among the hundred grasses.
Have you not seen, at the head of Qinghai, the white bones of old that no one gathers?
New ghosts brood on their wrongs, old ghosts weep; when the sky darkens and the rain falls damp, their voices murmur and chirp.
Meaning
The war carts rumble, the war horses neigh; each soldier marching out has bow and arrows at his waist.
Fathers, mothers, wives and children come running to see them off; the dust thrown up by the marching column hides the sky and the sun, so that the Xianyang Bridge cannot be seen.
They block the road, clutch at the soldiers' clothes, stamp their feet and wail; the sound of weeping rises straight up and pierces the clouds.
A man passing by the roadside asks the soldiers what it means; they say only that the authorities levy men far too often.
Some at fifteen go north of the Yellow River to guard the frontier; even at forty they are sent west of the river to work the garrison fields.
When they went off to serve they were not yet grown, and the village elder bound a headcloth for them; when they come home their hair is white, and still they must go and guard the border.
The blood of the soldiers on the frontier flows like a river, yet the emperor's desire to widen the frontier has not stopped.
Have you not heard that in the two hundred districts of Han east of Mount Hua, a thousand villages and ten thousand hamlets are rank with weeds and their fields lie waste?
Even where sturdy women take the hoe in hand
Background
Read the background
"The Song of the War Chariots" was written in 751 (the tenth year of the Tianbao era of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang). There are two views as to its background. Earlier commentators mostly held that it was written because Emperor Xuanzong was making war on the Tubo. The Du Yi says: "The old annotation holds that Emperor Minghuang made war upon the Tubo and the people suffered from military service, and that this poem was written for that reason; this is correct. It should have been written in the middle years of Tianbao." At that time the Tang court was continually making war on the peoples of the southwest. The Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government, chapter 216, records: "In the fourth month of the tenth year of Tianbao, Xianyu Zhongtong, military governor of Jiannan, attacked the Man of Nanzhao and was utterly defeated south of the Lu River. Zhongtong led eighty thousand troops; the army was crushed and sixty thousand soldiers perished, Zhongtong himself barely escaping with his life. Yang Guozhong concealed the defeat and still reported the merits of the campaign. A decree then conscripted on a great scale troops from the two capitals and from Henan and Hebei to strike at Nanzhao. Men heard that Yunnan teemed with pestilential vapors, and that eight or nine out of ten soldiers died before ever giving battle, so none was willing to volunteer. Yang Guozhong sent censors out along the roads to seize men and send them in chains to the army. Thus those who marched were full of grief and resentment; as their parents, wives, and children saw them off, weeping shook the countryside wherever they passed." The Song scholar Huang He, observing that the sorrowful scenes of parting recounted in the poem accord with what the histories record, held that it was written on account of the southern campaign. Qian Qianyi, analyzing the matter minutely in the first chapter of his Annotated Du Fu, likewise argued strongly for the southern-campaign theory, and most modern commentators follow this view.