Talk:The Quatrain of Seven Steps
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I question the translation of a few characters in the article
- Note: Cao Zhi uses several characters to describe the various processes of cooking and refining beans. Among those mentioned are: 煮 (boil), 漉 (filter), 燃 (skewer or char), 泣 (a pun on 蒸汽 "steam", the qi4 here actually means "to cry"), and 煎 (to pan-fry using oil).
Is bean a new-world food? When I learned this poem as a kid, my teacher said the poet was cooking peas, not beans.
燃 means burn which is quite different from charring. Where does skewer come from? In the imagery of the poem, the peas are being cooked in the pan by burning the beanstalk in the stove under the pan. The translation does not convey such imagery at all.
煎 does not necessarily mean frying with oil. For example, 煎藥 means simmering in water to reduce the volume of the herbal tea.
I have a feeling that the term 蒸汽 is modern, so it couldn't have been a pun. 泣 means shedding tears. I argue that the poet meant the liquid in the peas were leaking out during the cooking which resemble sobbing.
Kowloonese 19:40, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)
