Hey Girl, Do Not Wait Under The Plum Tree Anymore!

This week we assign to read the ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry, and finally, I find something that I have a bit of knowledge on. The Classic of Poetry is called Shi Jing in Chinese, and it is a collection of ancient poems starting from Zhou Dynasty. When I was in middle school in China, my Chinese class’s curriculum had a few lessons about the poems that are selected from the Classic of Poetry. The poem “Fishhawk” was a very famous one which I have learned in Chinese, however, the poem “Plums Are Falling” is more interesting to me because it describes a girl who lived in a society that so different from our modern world and her thoughts about seeking her love. In ancient time, China was a very closed minded and feudalism country, and it had many weird rules and traditions which respected and agreed by all citizens. In poem “Plums Are Falling,” it demonstrates a problematic tradition about females. Any females in the old time, especially maiden girls, they are living in a very closed and private life in order to protect their purity. Unmarried girls usually stayed in their own living room all day long, and if they had to go out on the street, they could not wear short skirt or short shirts. No matter how hot the weather was, the only body parts that they did not necessarily have to put cover or clothes on were their hands and faces. Girl’s bodies are sickly virgin and strict for people. For some extreme examples, if an unmarried girl accidentally to be seen of the other body parts other than the hands and face or she touched by a man, then she had already lost her virginity, and the best way to deal with this situation for that girl was to marry with that man. Moreover, the closed minded society not only restricted for their appearances, but also for females’ minds. Their mind and heart had to be faithful to the family and especially for her husband if they were married. For the maidens, they had to restrain their heart for love, and control their emotions for wanting fall in love with the man they like; it is simply because most of the time they could not decide which man they are going to marry. Moreover, if it was before marriage, girls could not show any of the emotions which deal with “like”, “love” to any man because those emotions would also considered to be wrong and they had lost their virginity mentally.

In this poem, in the end of spring, there is a maiden girl who looks at the plums falling from the tree. It is a metaphor for showing that the time flies, the best time of the year almost passes by; here also indicates that as a woman, her youth is also passing by quickly. The number uses in the poem are not the actual number, in ancient China, number seven and up usually means a lot of, and number three and less means a bit of; or the number used in the poem means an approximately percentage number. While the number of fruit on the tree becoming less and less, the maiden urging for her love becoming stronger and stronger. In the beginning, she requests that she wants a nice looking one; when there only had thirty percent of the fruits left on the tree, she wants a mature one. Lastly, when she notices that almost all of the fruits have fallen on the ground, she only hopes that she could marry to a man, any man. I think this is kind of sad, she has wasted her time and youth on waiting and hoping her love to come, but she never dares to approach to one. Finally, after she becomes old, like the plum tree without any plums, she is still single and lonely. This poem is very irony to me, the girl had many choices, and the society and the traditional rules prohibited her from pursuing her love. It is a tragic love poem; while it shows the girl’s aspiration for love, it demonstrates the girl’s sorrow for the lost of her youth.

Here is a picture of a chinese girl cosplay the girl in the poem under the plum tree.