Document L was produced in Weining by a group of Miao teachers. I obtained a copy through the good offices of Mr Dong Ren-da. Before sending it, he kindly went through and wrote the meaning in English of every Chinese character.

Following the preface and index at the beginning of Document L the writers inserted two short poems, the first in Chinese, the second in Miao. The former, only four lines in classical Chinese, is said to have been written by General Shi Da-kai in honour of the Miao of Dading for their assistance in the Tai Ping rebellion. Mr Dong’s translation, with some modification, has been printed in the TR file, but the poem is not included in the TX file, being written entirely in Chinese characters which can be seen in the images of the initial pages of Document L.

The Miao poem is by Zhang Fei-ran, one of the compilers of Document L. It is modern in form, consisting of four, four-line stanzas. The final vowel in each of the 16 lines is "ao" so that the poem rhymes throughout. Each stanza has three long lines of 13 of 14 syllables, followed by a short, chorus line of 6 syllables. The language is full of four-syllable expressions which give the poem rhythm and style, and contains a number of those poetic exaggerations – ‘towering up to the sky’, ‘twice a thousand, twice ten thousand years’, ‘the rim of the sky at the end of the earth’ – all dear to the heart of Miao poets, but which lose much of their impact in translation.

Translation of poems
Literal Transcription
Notes

You can see the original documents for these poems

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Word97 Introduction
Word97 Translation
Word97 Transcription
Word97 Notes

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