Zhang Ye/Poems

## Poems

1. The Song of the Stormy Petrel
2. The Furthest Distance In The World (Flying Bird and Fish)
3. A Generation
4. Untitled Poem #1
5. The Silence of Vajra Guru Pema (See Me or Not)
6. Shuidiao Getou
7. Dead Water
8. Everything
9. This is also Everything
10. It's Not Like I'll Come
11. Facing the Sea With Spring Blossoms
12. Lyrics to Remembering Your Charm - Remembrance of the Tale of the Crimson Cliff
13. In the Future We Trust
14. My Confession
15. Prisoner's Song
16. Some People
17. Self-mockery
18. The Answer
19. Sunflower in the Sun
20. Working Together
21. Happy
22. To The Oak
23. Eight Things To Look Forward To
24. Missing You (Part 4 of 5)
25. A Mooring on the Qinhuai River
26. Passing By Huaqing Palace
27. Lady Yu, the Royal Beauty
28. The Lavishly Decorated Zither
29. Mourning Day
30. Ode of Mulan
31. I Love This Land
32. Personally Inscribed on a Small Picture
33. Bamboos on the Rocks
34. A Departing Song of Traveling to Tianmu in a Dream
35. If By Life You Were Deceived
36. Quiet Night Thought
37. Self-motivation: Struggle
38. The Road Not Taken
39. A Flowering Tree
40. Saying Goodbye to Peking University Again
41. Crossing Half of China to Sleep with You
42. A Successful Flower
43. Admiring the Mountains
44. A Husband's and Wife's Mutual Saudade
45. Quatrain for a Summer's Day
46. Experience is the Fruit of Life
47. Rotten Fruit
48. Spring in Qin Garden: Snow
49. I'm Unfamiliar with this World!
50. I'm Unfamiliar with this World - Original Pinyin
51. Life Fantasia - Chapter 1080: Gu Cheng's 'Life Fantasia'!
52. Rainy Alley - Chapter 1094: Zhang Ye's request for leave!

## Essays

1. Tribute to the White Poplar
2. On Horses

## Couplets

### Beijing Couplet Competition

#### Preliminaries

1. **Elder Qian - Zhang Ye:** The sea tide; it rises everyday; everyday it rises and everyday it falls / the cloud forms; it forms constantly; constantly it forms and constantly it dissolves (Chapter 113: Zhang Ye’s Second Half!)
	* Second Variation: the sea tide; it comes daily; daily it falls / the cloud forms; it expands often; often it shrinks
	* Third Variation: The sea tide; daily it rises; daily it falls / The cloud forms; often it expands; often it dissipates
	* Fourth Variation: The sea tide; it rises and rises; daily it falls / The cloud forms; it expands and expands; often it shrinks
	* Fifth Variation: The tide comes in the morning; daily it rises, daily it falls / The cloud often spreads; often it expands and dissipates
	* Sixth Variation: The tide comes in the morning; its rise daily falls / The cloud often spreads; its expansion often shrinks
	* Seventh Variation: The seawater daily forms tides; the daily tide daily falls / The cloud often grows long, the often expansion often dissipates
	* Eighth Variation: The tide comes daily, daily the tide falls / The cloud expands often; often the expansion shrinks
	* Ninth Variation: The seawater daily forms morning tides, daily it falls / The clouds often makes expansions; often it shrinks

#### Finals

1. **Judge #1 - Zhang Ye:** A lotus and monk on a painting / The ink on the book writes Official Han Lin (Chapter 118: The Three Couplets of the Finals!)
2. **Judge #2** - Zhang Ye**:** Everywhere, red flowers make it red everywhere / Green tree groves are lush green (Chapter 118: The Three Couplets of the Finals!)
3. **Elder Qian** - Zhang Ye**:** The snow reflects the blossoms as the blossoms project the snow / The larks suit the willows as the willow suits the lark (Chapter 118: The Three Couplets of the Finals!)
4. **Contestant #1** - Zhang Ye**:** Lakes, mountains, bright and gorgeous everywhere / Sunny days, rainy days, wonderful and miraculous all the time (Chapter 119: A God-Like Zhang Ye, Shocking Couplets!)
	* Can be read backwards: The clear mountains and rivers are everywhere / It’s very good even when it’s rainy or sunny
5. **Contestant #2** - Zhang Ye**:** No (Wu) mountain can be compared to Mt Wu / What (He) water can be clearer than the river’s (He) water? (Chapter 119: A God-Like Zhang Ye, Shocking Couplets!)
6. A crow flies into a siege of herons; delivering coal in the snow / A phoenix stands upon the mandarin ducks’ pond; adding flowers onto embroidery (Chapter 119: A God-Like Zhang Ye, Shocking Couplets!)
7. **Contestant #5** - Zhang Ye**:** Able to swallow the two springs, three rivers, four seas, five lakes with one mouth / Daring to enter the hundred surnames, the thousand families and the ten thousand households from everywhere alone (Chapter 119: A God-Like Zhang Ye, Shocking Couplets!)
8. A White Snake crosses the river, a red sun overhead / An Azure Dragon hangs on the wall, multiple golden stars it wore (Chapter 119: A God-Like Zhang Ye, Shocking Couplets!)
9. The sky as a chessboard, the stars are its pieces, who dares play? / The ground as a pipa, the paths are its strings, who dares play? (Chapter 119: A God-Like Zhang Ye, Shocking Couplets!)
10. The winds are cold, as frost turns to snow / The sun shines in Duanwu, Chongyang can be seen in the Qingming/clear waters (Chapter 119: A God-Like Zhang Ye, Shocking Couplets!)
11. A northern goose flies south; its wings point east and west as they go up and down? / A cart in front leaves behind; two tracks left and right as it wobbles up and down (Chapter 119: A God-Like Zhang Ye, Shocking Couplets!)
12. An old crow steps on an old forked branch; the crow flies; a branch falls / The red-crowned crane returns to the heavenly ravines, a crane cries; the ravine sounds (Chapter 119: A God-Like Zhang Ye, Shocking Couplets!)
13. **Zheng Anbang** - Zhang Ye**:** A halved tree does not need an axe / It is indeed not a bit relevant (Chapter 119: A God-Like Zhang Ye, Shocking Couplets!)
	* The ‘shù’ (树, tree) matches with ‘guǒ’ (果, meaning fruit, part of indeed) as the substance. ‘yī diǎn’ (一点, a bit as a length) matches ‘bàn xún’ (半寻, need) as the quantifier. In ancient times, 8 feet is ‘xún’. And ‘gān’ (干) matches fǔ (斧, axe), which is the name of a weapon. In ancient times, gān was a weapon. (Mismatched Couplet)
14. **Big Thunder** - Zhang Ye**:** Leaving a path in Spring’s snow to view the plum blossom / The stream flows through the glorious mountains in a sidelong glance (Chapter 119: A God-Like Zhang Ye, Shocking Couplets!)
	* The first sound of each word of the first half matches to do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti, the seven tones.
	* The second half is a homonym of One-Two-Three-Four-Five-Six-Seven.
15. **Zhang Ye:** 烟锁池塘柳 (yān suǒ chí táng liǔ, Willow pond locked in smoke) (Chapter 121: This World has another Millennial Impossibility!)
	* Every word contains one of the five elements in its left radical - Fire (火), Metal (金), Water (水), Earth (土), Wood (木)
	* Millennial Impossibility
	* The best-accepted match is 桃燃锦江堤 (táo rán jǐn jiāng dī, peach blossoms scorch the Jinjiang dyke)

#### Zhang Ye's Championship Speech

1. **Zhang Ye:** Mice, old or young, we call them ‘old’ (老, lǎo) / Turtles, male or female, they are surnamed Wu (乌) (Chapter 122: Face Smacking Specialist is Back!)
	* mice (老鼠, lǎoshǔ), turtles (乌龟, wū guī, also used as a vulgarity, like bastard)
2. **Zhang Ye:** A bull’s head hopes to grow a pair of dragon’s horns / But have you ever seen elephant tusks growing out of a dog’s mouth (when have you seen a mean fellow speak of nice things) (Chapter 122: Face Smacking Specialist is Back!)
3. **Meng Dongguo - Zhang Ye:** Two apes breaking branches deep in the forest; a little monkey dares to have seen it, too? / A horse steps into dirty mud; how can the old beast (bast\*\*d) raise its hooves (Chapter 122: Face Smacking Specialist is Back!)
4. **Zhang Ye:** 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 / filial piety, respect, loyalty, trust courtesy, uprightness, honesty (Chapter 122: Face Smacking Specialist is Back!)
	* The first verse had forgotten about 8. The second verse lacked a shame - forgetting 8 lacking shame (bast\*\*d with no shame)

### Zhang Ye vs Chen Feng

1. Divination lot, Qian. Divination lot, Kun, 8 by 8, a total of 64 divinations. The rules of the Universe are set / The 9 cries of the Luan (Simurgh), the 9 cries of the Feng (Phoenix), 9 by 9, a total of 81 cries. The melody of man and woman’s union (Chapter 316: Compete with Zhang Ye in couplets?)
	* Qian Kun refers to the Universe.
	* The “simurgh” a mythical bird with eagle-like features of Persian literary tradition, has been widely adopted by western sinologists to translate the analogous Chinese mythical bird, luan, following the lead of the late Edward Schafer. The luan should not be imagined, however as a raptor, since it lives solely on the fruit of the bamboo tree.
2. Touring the West Lake, holding a pewter flask, the pewter flask falls into the West Lake, a pity for the pewter flask / Touring the West Mountains, holding some clothes, the clothes fall off the mountains, a pity for the clothes (Chapter 316: Compete with Zhang Ye in couplets?)
3. Beginning with laughter, past laughter, present laughter, everything can be faced with just laughter / Magnanimity can contain, contain the skies, contain the earth, so what can’t it contain? (Chapter 316: Compete with Zhang Ye in couplets?)
4. A White Snake crosses the river, a red sun overhead / An Azure Dragon hangs on the wall, multiple golden stars it wore (Chapter 316: Compete with Zhang Ye in couplets?)
5. I am not me when you look at me, when I look at myself, I am not myself either / You look like who you impersonate, whoever impersonates whoever, whoever will become whoever (Chapter 316: Compete with Zhang Ye in couplets?)

### Calligraphy Association Anniversary

1. **Zhang Ye:** 寂寞寒窗空守寡 (jì mò hán chuāng kōng shǒu guǎ, in this lonely and tiny unit as a widow) (Chapter 370: The last match! Couplets duel!)
	* Millennial Impossibility with no second-half coming close in a hundred years

### National Crosstalk and Skit Competition

1. **Zhang Ye:** Brown rice, pumpkin soup, single wife, a bunch of kids / White rice, turtle soup, ten kids, a bunch of wives (Chapter 480: Embodiment of Guo Degang!)
2. **Zhang Ye:** The sword of a hero doesn't age / The madam's sultry never wanes (Chapter 480: Embodiment of Guo Degang!)