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Dēng Guàn Què LóuClimbing Stork Tower 登鹳雀楼
Climb higher still — a grander sight awaits.
Original Chinese text with pinyin
白日依山尽
bái rì yī shān jìn
黄河入海流
huáng hé rù hǎi liú
欲穷千里目
yù qióng qiān lǐ mù
更上一层楼
gèng shàng yī céng lóu
Simplified characters; traditional title: 登鸛雀樓.
Note on the text: Title in Chinese textbooks: 登鹳雀楼.
English translation
The sun beyond the mountains glows;
The Yellow River seawards flows.
You can enjoy a grander sight
By climbing to a greater height.
Original translation by Poetune — literal but poetic, written for this site.
Line by line
Meaning and imagery
The first couplet is a vast panorama in strict parallelism: sun and river, mountains and sea, one sinking, one flowing. The second couplet turns scenery into a principle: to see farther, climb higher. Today the line "更上一层楼" is used for any kind of self-improvement. The poem shows how Tang poetry can be both grand landscape and plain wisdom.
Background
Stork Tower (鹳雀楼) stood at Puzhou in Shanxi, overlooking the Yellow River. Wang Zhihuan's poem is one of the first Chinese poems children learn. The Japanese data spells the tower 鸛鵲楼; Chinese textbooks write 鹳雀楼.
Key words
- 白日 bái rì
- the bright sun
- 穷 qióng
- to exhaust, to reach the end of
- 千里目 qiān lǐ mù
- a thousand-li view
- 更上一层楼 gèng shàng yī céng lóu
- climb one more storey
About the poet: Wang Zhihuan
Wang Zhihuan was a High Tang poet of whom only six poems survive, yet two of them — "Climbing Stork Tower" and "Liangzhou Song" — are among the most famous in Chinese.
Lifetime: 688–742. Other famous works: Liangzhou Song (Beyond Yumen Pass) (凉州词); Climbing Stork Tower (登鹳雀楼).