What I learned about poetry from a Chinese soldier

A departure from eco-news for an autobiographical note

Photo by Brian Matangelo on Unsplash

Like shooting stars, a few people pass through our lives swiftly but shine so brightly they change our perspective forever.

We were five travelers in one sleeper cabin on a 24-hour train ride from Xi'an, the ancient capital of China, back to Beijing. The tracks clattered a constant steel heartbeat below. The window was shut tight, shielding us from China’s smells, its moist, coal-choked air. Endless green fields, every corner packed with crops, flew by, hour after hour.

The four dark navy cots were immaculately clean and fairly comfortable, with plenty of headroom. Across from us, a young American woman had invited her Chinese travel partner to join from another cabin. In the far corner sat a Chinese soldier dressed in a perfectly pressed uniform adorned with several ribbons and medals. A stiff service cap never came off his head.

I scanned the soldier several times over the endless ride but couldn’t catch his eye. Not a look, nod or word from him for many long hours.

My mom and I chatted with the American and her companion. He must not have been completely fluent in English, because I remember sprinkling in some Mandarin Chinese, in which I’m moderately fluent.

The soldier read and ate in his corner, minding his business. I began to create stories about him, to imagine realities about who he was and why he wouldn’t talk to us. This was 2007, and not a time of tension between the U.S. and China. But, perhaps, I thought, he believed it might be unpatriotic for him to engage with Americans. Perhaps American tourists were the most uninteresting thing to him. Or worse, we were repulsive. My mind rocketed into a world of distrust, where he’d been taught who-knows-what about Americans. And so, though I’ve spent time with all manner of Chinese people, from businessmen to peasants, officials to artists, I was intimidated by this soldier.

He was ageless, with clear skin and impassive eyes. If he could afford a sleeping car and travel on his own, he couldn’t have been any common soldier. We were all traveling in the most expensive class. His erect posture never faltered for 12 hours. His dignity filled the cabin, causing our voices always to stay low and calm. We were so far beneath him. In my mind, he grew to be the most important person I’d ever shared company with. His silence drove my curiosity a little crazy.

As the 24 hours to Beijing shrank to 12, four of the five of us had exchanged life stories, and I had begun to translate for the friendlier Chinese man some stories about my mom’s time as an English teacher in China.

As I recount in “On President Carter, China and my family,” we lived in China for three years when I was a child. My mother became close friends with 30 Chinese students, as well as several university officials. In fact, on this trip, we’d returned to China so that she could receive a teacher’s award and an honorary PhD from Hunan University.

I translated all of this to our interested audience. The American woman understood Chinese as well, so Chinese had become half the conversation so that her friend could participate.

I remember the soldier perfectly, but I remember nothing of the others, what they looked like or how they dressed, other than that we were having a good time chatting. For kicks, I decided it was time to pull out my limited knowledge of Tang Dynasty poetry. I’d learned a few poems in college, short stanzas that all Chinese children learn. I sometimes recite them to show off. I also do it because I believe they are beautiful.

“I know a few Chinese poems,” I said.

They seemed eager to hear, so I recited a well-known poem by Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai (701 to 762 A.D.), “Thoughts in the Silent Night.”

床前明月光，

疑是地上霜

举头望明月

低头思故乡

I tried my best to translate it for my mom, who was so busy teaching English to eager students, she never became fluent in Chinese:

Before my bed, moonlight glows

I think it could be frost

I lift my head to look at the moon

I lower my head and think of home

***

The talkative Chinese man offered a few poems of his own, which I did my best to translate for Mom. At this point, I noticed some movement from the soldier’s corner. He flicked his newspaper and cast a glance at his countryman, then turned back to reading.

I remembered another poem called “Climbing White Stork Pagoda,” by Wang Zhihuan (688-742 A.D), which is about not giving up on goals.

白日依山盡

黃河入海流

欲窮千里目

更上一層樓

White sun sets behind the mountain

Yellow River flows into the sea

Desiring to see a thousand more miles

Again, we climb one more floor

***

The poetry about a pagoda reminded my mom of a gift she received upon leaving China. I’d heard the story a few times. I tried my best to explain it in Chinese.

“She received a scroll of calligraphy from a friend, a university official, when we were leaving China,” I said. This was 1982.

“It was a beautiful poem,” my mom said. “It was relevant to me because I was leaving. It was a poem about thinking of old friends.”

I tried to explain this in Chinese to my small audience. I asked her if she could recite the poem. She couldn’t. She just remembered what it was about.

“The poet has climbed the tower at Dongting Lake,” Mom said. “This is a famous lake in Hunan Province.”

The soldier raised his head, as if seeing my mom for the first time.

“A poet has climbed the pagoda at Dongting Lake,” I say in Chinese. “And weeps as he misses his friends.”

The soldier turned to me.

“On Yueyang Tower,” he said in Chinese.

My breath caught.

“Do you know it?” I asked. “Would you …?”

He nodded. His eyes lit up, and he leaned forward. Then, he recited “On Yueyang Tower” by DuFu (712 to 770 A.D.).

登岳阳楼

昔闻洞庭水
今上岳阳楼
吴楚东南坼
乾坤日夜浮
亲朋无一字
老病有孤舟
戎马关山北
凭轩涕泗流

I ask him to say each line more slowly, so I can translate for my mom:

I’d long heard of the waters of Dongting Lake,
Now I've climbed Yueyang Pagoda.
Here, Wu and Chu¹ split to the East and South,
Here, Heaven and Earth float day and night.
From family and friends comes not a single word,
Old and sick, I have one solitary boat.
War horses ride north of the mountain pass,
By the pagoda, tears flow down.

***

A collective sigh filled the warm cabin.

We expressed our gratitude to the soldier.

His stiff demeanor had evaporated.

Then, he turned to my mom and said in Chinese, “I know an American poem.”

Our voices hushed. The train tracks hummed their heartbeat below.

“Langston Hughes,” he said, but his mouth could barely form the English syllables.

Mom’s eyes twinkled. I understood his words, but I couldn’t believe them. Did he just say, “Langston Hughes”?

The soldier’s lips softened just a bit. Then, he allowed them to curve upward.

The lines stumbled slowly from his mouth, as if he hadn’t spoken them in many long years, and they were:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die …

My mom’s soft voice joined the recitation alongside him. Their words blended together, their voices a holding of hands, a walk together of two people meeting across a small train cabin and an ocean of culture and history and humanity.

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

***

We spoke with the soldier for perhaps another 45 minutes. He was, it turned out, another human, with family in one place and work in another, a life like any other.

The stillness of night darkened the view from the window.

It was late and time for everyone to get some sleep. We’d been satiated without knowing that we hungered.

When we turned off the light and crawled into our cots, I lay awake and thinking in the dark, marveling. My mind was embracing new knowledge, and it was as simple as knowing the taste of milk or the smell of freshly fallen rain.

I was beginning to know how peace is possible.

When the train screeched into Beijing in the morning and we had to part ways, we all sadly said goodbye, as if we were old friends who would never meet again, but who would always remember each other.

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Postscript

I’d always wondered how a Chinese soldier might have studied Langston Hughes. When I prepared to publish this note, I discovered that Hughes visited China in 1933 and is considered the first Black intellectual to set foot on Chinese soil. In 2019, Selina Lai-Henderson discovered an unpublished poem by Hughes about China and wrote about it in The Yale Review, where she says that “Hughes’s trip elevated African Americans in the Chinese cultural imagination.”

Image courtesy Langston Hughes Papers. James Weldon Johnson Collection in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

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Earth Hope is a solutions-based journalism project that highlights environmental success stories from around the globe. I’m Amanda Royal, a former newspaper reporter and current eco-news junkie. Read more about this project and what inspired it.

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