Chou Chang

I was always wondering how boring a language such as English can be, especially when you are talking about love.

There are so many terminologies for different stages of sensitive feelings in Chinese, including before you started to feel anything stage to afterwards when you end up one relationship-the final stage.
Wait, there's another stage which is even though the affair is over, you still keep thinking about it for years and years, when you think of it , you feel a little sour and bitter in your heart and you couldn't say anything or tell anyone else about it except for sighing inside of your mind. And you will keep thinking about it when you do a relevant thing to this part of memories, just triggers that fragment of sweetness and bitterness.
Or, there could be a better way to solve it or there could be an better ending. If you keep thinking about it in this way with a lot of assumptions of "if"s, and you still couldn't think of a better solution after all. Put you back to the situation, you will still make the same choice and leave the sad reality alone.

This word, we call it- " Chou Chang".

There's one poet from Song dynasty named SunZhu (1031-1079) wrote one poem (There's a special form for writing poem back then in Song dynasty called 'Ci' in Chinese.) " He Man Zi- Qiu Yuan"( " He Man Zi" is a format of organizing the order of the words among 'Ci's, "Qiu Yuan" means the the sorrow from Autumn. " Yuan" is a word which is tricky, it can be the blames from female lovers to their male partners, or the sadness from a failed relationship.)

He wrote in this poem that " Tian Ruo You Qing Tian Yi Lao" which became really famous and important for contemporary culture that so many movies and literature quote it or name after it. " Tian" is sky, and it can be referred to "god" or someone unknown mythical power which is controlling our lives. The whole sentence means " the god will get old if it has emotions ( or love, feelings )". Another romantic sentence from this poem is " Chou Chang Jiu Huan Ru Men, Jue Lai Wu Chu Zhui Xun" where this " Chou Chang" that I mentioned before came from. The whole sentence means " I feel 'Chou Chang' when I am thinking of the old lover(s), because sometimes they are ( he or she) like dreams that I had, I can not re-trace them when I wake up."

This deep emotion came from a male poet which is amazing. It was quite common for men to write these beautiful sentences about love and emotions in the ancient time.
I couldn't find any European men who can fully understand this deep level of emotional stages, or are we too busy to stop and think 'did we miss something' in the disposable society?

It is a beautiful experience to re-read these poems and think about the emotions they had thousands of years ago.

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Reference:
SunZhu, Song dynasty, He Man Zi- Qiu Yuan.

Here is the Chinese original poem:

何满子 秋怨
宋 孙洙

怅望浮生急景，凄凉宝瑟余音。
楚客多情偏怨别，碧山远水登临。
目送连天衰草，夜阑几处疏砧。

黄叶无风自落，秋云不雨常阴。
天若有情天亦老，摇摇幽恨难禁。
惆怅旧欢如梦，觉来无处追寻。