琵琶行

Song of the Pipa

A narrative poem by Bai Juyi, written in exile in 816 CE

Six hundred and sixteen characters, forty-four couplets, one night on the river — and a musician and a poet who recognise the same ruin in each other.

Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–846) · Tang dynasty · Complete English translation · Teaching deck

Slide 2 · Lesson frame

What this lesson is for

Learning objectives

Retell the poem's plot in your own words — who speaks, where, and what turns the scene.
Explain how the poem describes music: what sound does the language itself make?
Trace the parallel between the exiled poet and the fallen musician — the poem's central argument.
Read the famous lines closely and say why they work.
Use five key expressions from the poem in fresh sentences of your own.

How to run the session

10 min — context, the poet's situation, the scene (slides 3–5)
30 min — close reading, movement by movement (slides 5–13)
10 min — craft and language bank (slides 14–15)
15 min — check, discussion, homework (slides 16–18)

Slide 16 carries a hidden answer key — press A to reveal, or print the deck for a handout.

Slide 3 · Context

Before the poem: a career, a demotion, a river

Timeline

772–846 — Bai Juyi (白居易), courtesy name Letian, known as the "Hermit of Fragrant Mountain." China's most popular poet of his century; his poems were sung in the streets, not just read.
806 — Song of Everlasting Sorrow, his long poem on the Tang court. Already famous — and already obsessed with what power costs private lives.
815 — Demoted to deputy prefect of Jiujiang (九江郡司马), a minor post far from the capital. His enemies were not critics; they were colleagues.
816 — The poem. Autumn, at Penpu (湓浦) on the river, seeing a guest off.
818 — Recall to the capital. He never stopped writing; he never forgot the river.

Why the river matters

Xunyang (浔阳), modern Jiujiang, Jiangxi — on the Yangtze, at the edge of the empire.
Here there was no music: "all year I hear no sound of strings or pipes."
And here there was no career: a poet with nothing to do but listen.
The setting is not decoration. The poem's argument happens in the silence.

Ask: what does a writer do with an assignment to fail? (He listens, and then he writes down exactly what he heard.)

Slide 4 · Shape

Six beats, one long night

1

A farewell with no music

Autumn night, river, maples and reeds. The host dismounts; wine is raised — but there is no music to drink to. The joy never comes.

2

A sound from the water

Suddenly a pipa from a neighbouring boat. The host forgets to go home; his guest will not set sail.

3

She is summoned

Called a thousand times, she appears holding the instrument, half-covering her face. Two or three strokes — and the feeling is already there.

4

Music as autobiography

She plays; the poem plays with her. Her life surfaces in sound: the capital, the applause, the slow fade, the merchant's empty boat.

5

The poet confesses

He describes his own exile — no music, low ground, bitter bamboo, cuckoo and gibbon. Two ruined people, one sentence.

6

One more piece

She plays again, differently. The whole company weeps. The last image: the poet's blue official robe, soaked through.

Slide 5 · Close reading I — the opening

Two lines that set the whole poem in motion

The text

At the head of the Xunyang River I bade a guest goodnight;浔阳江头夜送客，枫叶荻花秋瑟瑟。maples and reeds — the autumn wind rustling, raw and cold.

The host dismounts; his guest is on the boat.主人下马客在船，举酒欲饮无管弦。They raise their wine to drink, but there is no music to go with it.

The joy never comes; the parting turns grim.醉不成欢惨将别，别时茫茫江浸月。As we say goodbye, the wide river drowns the moon.

Teaching notes

Sound before sense. "Rustling, raw and cold" is written with the onomatopoeia of the Chinese line itself — the poem begins as an acoustic object before it becomes a story.
Absence as plot. "There is no music to go with it" is a structural silence: the pipa enters a gap the poem has already prepared.
Drowning the moon. The farewell is literally submerged — the image predicts the poet's own submersion in feeling two hundred lines later.
Ask: "Parting turns grim" — why grim and not sad? (Because the grimness is social: a gathering where nobody can speak freely.)

Slide 6 · Close reading II — the entrance

She does not walk on; she is dragged on

The text

Suddenly, over the water, the sound of a pipa.忽闻水上琵琶声，主人忘归客不发。The host forgets to go home; the guest will not set sail.

Following the sound, he asks quietly who is playing.寻声暗问弹者谁，琵琶声停欲语迟。The music stops; she is slow to speak.

He moves his boat alongside and invites her over; more wine, the lamp turned back, and the banquet reopened.移船相近邀相见，添酒回灯重开宴。

Called and called a thousand times, at last she comes out —千呼万唤始出来，still holding the pipa, half-covering her face.犹抱琵琶半遮面。

Teaching notes

Turning the lamp back. The Chinese detail 回灯 means the lamp was moved so it would shine on her face again — the light returns, the music returns, the evening starts over.
Half-covering her face. Protection, not coyness: a professional performer judged by her face. The audience's gaze is already a risk.
The most famous stage entrance in Chinese literature — and it happens before a single note is played.
Dramatic function: the host is curious; the guest is impatient; she is exposed. Note who is in control of the scene.

Slide 7 · Close reading III — the music

The poem does not describe the pipa. It performs it.

She turns the pegs and touches the strings two or three times; the tune is not yet formed, but the feeling is already there.转轴拨弦三两声，未成曲调先有情。

String by string she holds them down, note by note she broods — as if she were telling out a lifetime of frustration.弦弦掩抑声声思，似诉平生不得志。

The great strings roar like a sudden downpour; the small strings whisper like talk kept low.大弦嘈嘈如急雨，小弦切切如私语。

Roaring and whispering, tangled and interlaced — great pearls and small pearls fall into a jade dish.嘈嘈切切错杂弹，大珠小珠落玉盘。

Teaching notes

Weather, then birds, then jewellery, then silk. The similes move from the largest scale to the smallest — the music shrinks as the sorrow deepens.
"The feeling is already there." Performance before repertoire: the poem argues that biography is audible.

Activity · 5 minutes

Read the four lines aloud, then map the volume shape — loud, soft, bright, tangled. Ask the class to hear their own reading.
Next slide: the full repertoire of images the poem uses for this one instrument.

Slide 8 · Close reading III — the repertoire

What else the poem makes of that sound

The sound-repertoire

Chinese simile	What you hear
急雨 — sudden rain	volume, violence, the downpour
私语 — private talk	intimacy, confession
珠落玉盘 — pearls on jade	each note distinct, hard, bright
间关莺语 — orioles in blossom	the songbird turn: lightness
泉流冰下 — a spring under ice	the vein of lament, choked
裂帛 — tearing silk	the final stroke: a tear

Chinese simile

What you hear

急雨 — sudden rain

volume, violence, the downpour

私语 — private talk

intimacy, confession

珠落玉盘 — pearls on jade

each note distinct, hard, bright

间关莺语 — orioles in blossom

the songbird turn: lightness

泉流冰下 — a spring under ice

the vein of lament, choked

裂帛 — tearing silk

the final stroke: a tear

Teaching notes

One pivot: after the jade dish comes the oriole, then the spring under ice — the sound chokes. The instruments are fine; the story inside them is not.
Scale: rain is weather, the oriole is a garden, the pearl is a jewel, the spring is underground, the silk is a held breath. The poem drops the scale as the note falls.
Violence in a love song. The cavalry and the tearing silk are conventions of the repertoire — the poet lets the music carry what it once accompanied.
Ask: the pipa is a domestic instrument played by a woman. Why is the music imagined as an army?

Slide 9 · Close reading IV — the turn of silence

"Here, no sound at all says more than sound"

The text

The cold spring seizes the strings and makes them rough;冰泉冷涩弦凝绝，凝绝不通声暂歇。the sound stops dead — for a moment, nothing.

A hidden sorrow, a grudge kept dark, rises out of the silence —别有幽愁暗恨生，here, no sound at all says more than sound.此时无声胜有声。

A silver flask bursts and the water spurts out; armoured horsemen break from the ranks, blades and spears ring.银瓶乍破水浆迸，铁骑突出刀枪鸣。

The piece ends; she draws the plectrum across her heart, and the fourth string sounds like tearing silk.曲终收拨当心画，四弦一声如裂帛。

Teaching notes

The strategy of the false climax. The poem builds toward a burst of noise — flask, cavalry, blades — then ends on a whisper: one string, tearing silk.
Silence as climax. The most quoted line in the poem is about not playing. The content of the moment is delivered by the pause.
Violence in a love song. The cavalry image is a musical convention, not a battle — but the poet never lets us forget what the music once accompanied.
Ask: the pipa is a domestic instrument played by a woman. Why is the music imagined as an army? (Because her life has been a war of survival — the sound carries the damage.)

Slide 10 · Close reading V — her story

A career told backward, in four lines

The text

She says: I was born and bred in the capital; my family lived below Toad Mound.自言本是京城女，家在虾蟆陵下住。

At thirteen I had mastered the pipa; my name was entered in the first rank of the Music Bureau.十三学得琵琶成，名属教坊第一部。

After a performance the finest masters conceded to me; dressed out, I was envied by Qiuniang.曲罢曾教善才服，妆成每被秋娘妒。

This year we laughed, and next year again; autumn moon and spring breeze, spent as if they cost nothing.今年欢笑复明年，秋月春风等闲度。

My younger brother went off to the army; my aunt died; evening and morning, my beauty faded.弟走从军阿姨死，暮去朝来颜色故。

Before my door the horses grew scarce; grown old, I married and became a merchant's wife.门前冷落鞍马稀，老大嫁作商人妇。

Merchants prize profit over parting; last month he went to Fuliang to buy tea.商人重利轻别离，前月浮梁买茶去。

He comes and goes by the river mouth, keeping an empty boat; moonlight rings the boat; the river water is cold.去来江口守空船，绕船明月江水寒。

Teaching notes

Decline in five verbs: mastered → conceded to → envied → faded → married. The grammar of falling is a sequence of tenses that keep moving forward while the life keeps falling.
"As if they cost nothing" is the saddest line in the poem: the golden years were spent as though they were free. They were not.
Empty boat, cold water. She ends with a husband who is never in the room — only his empty boat and the moon.
Language note: "the horses grew scarce" means the clients stopped coming; the rider, the applause and the lover all disappear in one image.

Slide 11 · The turn — the poem's hinge

Two strangers at the far edge of the world

Hearing the pipa, I sigh; hearing this story, I sigh again, and mutter low.我闻琵琶已叹息，又闻此语重唧唧。

Both of us are castaway souls at the world's far edge — why should two strangers like us ever have met before?同是天涯沦落人，相逢何必曾相识！

Why these lines are the poem

Before this moment the poem was a story about her. After it, it is a story about both of them.
She is a fallen courtesan; he is a disgraced official. Different trades, identical condition: both are among the luo — the fallen.
The line refuses the usual courtly logic. He does not offer her comfort as a superior; he claims equality, and asks why they had to meet at all.
Everything that follows — the poem's second half — is his side of the story, and the second performance is his commission of it.

Teaching notes

Form of the claim: two questions, one rhetorical — the second contains its own answer.
"Strangers like us." Shared condition, not shared acquaintance: the poem proposes a community of the ruined.
Class note: a poet of the Tang elite writing in the voice of a courtesan's equal is itself a small scandal. Discuss what the line risks socially.
Activity: paraphrase the couplet in modern English in one sentence a non-native speaker would find natural, then say what is lost.

Slide 12 · Close reading VI — his confession

The poet stops describing her and describes himself

The text

Since last year I have left the capital; banished, I lie ill in the city of Xunyang.我从去年辞帝京，谪居卧病浔阳城。

Xunyang lies remote and has no music; all year I hear no sound of strings or pipes.浔阳地僻无音乐，终岁不闻丝竹声。

Near the Pen River the ground is low and wet; yellow reeds and bitter bamboo grow around my house.住近湓江地低湿，黄芦苦竹绕宅生。

And what do I hear there, dawn and dusk? The cuckoo weeping blood, the gibbon's mournful cry.其间旦暮闻何物？杜鹃啼血猿哀鸣。

Spring rivers and flowered mornings, autumn moonlit nights — I often pour my wine and drink alone.春江花朝秋月夜，往往取酒还独倾。

Are there no mountain songs and village flutes? Their hoarse, grating noise is hard to hear.岂无山歌与村笛？呕哑嘲哳难为听。

Tonight, to hear you speak of the pipa, is like hearing immortal music — my ears are bright again.今夜闻君琵琶语，如听仙乐耳暂明。

Teaching notes

Structural mirror: his section answers hers line for line — capital ↔ river, applause ↔ silence, beauty ↔ illness.
"Drink alone." Her decline was forced on her by the market; his is a punishment he received from the state. Both are unmade by other people's desire for them.
The cuckoo's blood is a standard image of grief; the gibbon adds loneliness rather than lament — he is a caged, howling animal.
Asking permission to hear music: "Are there no mountain songs and village flutes?" He has to justify the treat before accepting it. Nobody offends a guest by offering a song — but he is a guest in a strange country.

Slide 13 · Close reading VII — the ending

The poem ends with the poet's wet sleeve

The text

Do not refuse; sit down again and play one more piece — I will write you a Song of the Pipa in return.莫辞更坐弹一曲，为君翻作《琵琶行》。

Touched by these words, she stands for a long while; then sits back down, presses the strings, quickens the tune.感我此言良久立，却坐促弦弦转急。

It is bleak now, nothing like the sound before; the whole company, hearing it again, weeps behind its hands.凄凄不似向前声，满座重闻皆掩泣。

And who of us sheds the most tears? The deputy prefect of Jiangzhou, in a blue robe soaked through.座中泣下谁最多？江州司马青衫湿。

Teaching notes

Art as repayment. "I will write you a poem" — the poet pays for the song with the only currency he has. Art for art, which is how the two strangers make peace.
She stands first, then plays faster. Her body hesitates; her hands don't. That is the whole moral of her life in one gesture.
The blue robe. Tang officials of the eighth rank and below wore blue-green. The colour of his rank is the colour his tears soak — an official's uniform dissolved by feeling.
Technique: the poem ends with a question that is also a boast: who cried most? The poet, of course. And the reader is invited to check.

Slide 14 · Craft

Six techniques worth stealing

Techniques

Technique	Where it shows
Sound as structure	Silence is prepared in line 1; the pipa fills the gap in line 5.
Mirror biography	Her decline, then his: two careers, identical shape.
Zoomorphic simile	Orioles, gibbon, cuckoo — the world answers the strings.
Concrete detail	"the horses grew scarce": decline measured by the crowd.
Self-incrimination	The host confesses before he praises — he buys the right to ask.
Closing image	Wet sleeve. Not the music, not the story: the fabric.

Technique

Where it shows

Sound as structure

Silence is prepared in line 1; the pipa fills the gap in line 5.

Mirror biography

Her decline, then his: two careers, identical shape.

Zoomorphic simile

Orioles, gibbon, cuckoo — the world answers the strings.

Concrete detail

"the horses grew scarce": decline measured by the crowd.

Self-incrimination

The host confesses before he praises — he buys the right to ask.

Closing image

Wet sleeve. Not the music, not the story: the fabric.

Teaching notes

Scale exercise (10 min): rewrite one of the poem's lines as a news report, then as a text message, then as a piece of weather forecast. Which version keeps the feeling?
Comparison prompt: Keats and his nightingale, or Villiers and his falling knife — does the comparison help or flatten the poem? (Both poets are reaching for a sound that exceeds language.)
Modern parallel: the late-2020s version of this scene is a stranger's small talk on a night bus. The poem is still asking the same question: who are we to each other for one night?

Slide 15 · Language bank

Five expressions to steal

Expression	Literal sense	How to use it
同是天涯沦落人	We are both fallen souls at the edge of the world	Of two people who have been ruined in the same way. Rarely used ironically.
老大嫁作商人妇	grown old, she married and became a merchant's wife	"She's married a tradesman." Register: rueful, unpretentious.
门前冷落鞍马稀	before my door, the horses grew scarce	"The customers stopped coming." Used of fading fame, popularity, business.
此时无声胜有声	here, no sound at all says more than sound	Silence carries more than speech. Very widely used; slightly formal.
别时茫茫江浸月	as we parted, the wide river drowned the moon	At parting, the scene overwhelms the people in it.

Expression

Literal sense

How to use it

同是天涯沦落人

We are both fallen souls at the edge of the world

Of two people who have been ruined in the same way. Rarely used ironically.

老大嫁作商人妇

grown old, she married and became a merchant's wife

"She's married a tradesman." Register: rueful, unpretentious.

门前冷落鞍马稀

before my door, the horses grew scarce

"The customers stopped coming." Used of fading fame, popularity, business.

此时无声胜有声

here, no sound at all says more than sound

Silence carries more than speech. Very widely used; slightly formal.

别时茫茫江浸月

as we parted, the wide river drowned the moon

At parting, the scene overwhelms the people in it.

Language work

Drill (5 min): one true sentence per expression, about a situation of your own — a farewell, a career change, a friendship ending.
Register check: which of the five could you say to a friend at a party? Which only in an essay?

Vocabulary worth the detour

Music Bureau (教坊) — the imperial performing institution; "first rank" was the highest compliment a musician could get.
Toad Mound (虾蟆陵) — a quarter of Chang'an where singing girls lived; the poem's shorthand for the entertainment capital.
Fuliang (浮梁) — tea country near modern Jingdezhen; the merchant's route, and the poem's image of a permanently absent husband.
The pipa (琵琶) — a pear-shaped lute, four strings, played horizontally with a plectrum: bright, percussive, and largely a woman's instrument.

Slide 16 · Comprehension check

Eight questions

1. What is missing from the farewell dinner in the first four lines, and why does the poem tell us so early?
2. How does the poem describe the sound of the pipa? Give three images and their effects.
3. Which line marks the poem's central idea, and what changes after it?
4. In what ways do the woman's story and the poet's story mirror each other?
5. Why does the poem end with an image of clothing?
6. "Here, no sound at all says more than sound." What is the poem claiming about silence?
7. What does the cuckoo and the gibbon add that the reeds and bamboo do not?
8. The woman says "I will write you a poem" — no, the poet does. Why does the repayment matter?

Teacher

Press A to toggle the answer key; it is also printed on handouts.
Questions 3, 5 and 8 are the ones worth arguing about — accept disagreement and ask for the line that supports it.
Pair work for 1–4, plenary for 5–8.

Slide 17 · Discussion

Five questions with no clean answers

1. Is the poem about the musician at all, or about the poet's need for a mirror?
2. The host buys her performance and then offers his own humiliation in exchange. Is that equality, or is it appropriation?
3. The poem was written by a man of rank about a woman of low rank, and circulated as entertainment. Does that context change what the poem means to us?
4. Compare with another poem about art and ruin — for example a modern song about a singer past her prime. What does the earlier poem still have that the modern one cannot?
5. "The poet's wet sleeve" — whose feeling does the poem finally honour?

Running the discussion

Require a line of evidence for every claim. This is a close-reading lesson, not an opinions lesson.
Question 2 is uncomfortable on purpose — do not soften it. The equality he claims is real, and it is also a way of making his story the poem's subject.
Useful board split: "the poem is generous" vs "the poem takes" — students argue from lines, then the teacher reads the last couplet aloud and asks who is crying.

Slide 18 · Homework

Take the poem out of the classroom

Core task (choose one)

Translator's workshop. Re-translate four couplets so that the English must carry the music. Submit your version beside the deck's, and mark every place you had to sacrifice meaning for sound.
Scene study. Write the same encounter in 800 words from the musician's point of view — she keeps the facts and changes the emphasis. Which version is sadder?
Translation into a modern art form. Turn one passage into a film script, a song lyric, or a series of five images. Keep the structure; change the medium.

Optional / extension

Listening. Find a performance of the two pieces the woman plays — Yishang ("Rainbow Skirt") and Liuyao ("Six Tunes") — and check the poem's claims against the sound.
Research. Who were the "Music Bureau" girls? Find one historical performer and write 300 words on what the poem leaves out.
Compare. Read Du Fu's poems about Bai Juyi, then write a paragraph on what the poem about the pipa does that a biography cannot.

Submission: one typed page + one paragraph of commentary on your own choices.

Appendix A · For the teacher

The Chinese original, all forty-four couplets

Useful for pointing, for reading aloud, and for showing students that a translation is an argument, not a window.

浔阳江头夜送客，枫叶荻花秋瑟瑟。

主人下马客在船，举酒欲饮无管弦。

醉不成欢惨将别，别时茫茫江浸月。

忽闻水上琵琶声，主人忘归客不发。

寻声暗问弹者谁，琵琶声停欲语迟。

移船相近邀相见，添酒回灯重开宴。

千呼万唤始出来，犹抱琵琶半遮面。

转轴拨弦三两声，未成曲调先有情。

弦弦掩抑声声思，似诉平生不得志。

低眉信手续续弹，说尽心中无限事。

轻拢慢捻抹复挑，初为《霓裳》后《六幺》。

大弦嘈嘈如急雨，小弦切切如私语。

嘈嘈切切错杂弹，大珠小珠落玉盘。

间关莺语花底滑，幽咽泉流冰下难。

冰泉冷涩弦凝绝，凝绝不通声暂歇。

别有幽愁暗恨生，此时无声胜有声。

银瓶乍破水浆迸，铁骑突出刀枪鸣。

曲终收拨当心画，四弦一声如裂帛。

东船西舫悄无言，惟见江心秋月白。

沉吟放拨插弦中，整顿衣裳起敛容。

自言本是京城女，家在虾蟆陵下住。

十三学得琵琶成，名属教坊第一部。

曲罢曾教善才服，妆成每被秋娘妒。

五陵年少争缠头，一曲红绡不知数。

钿头银篦击节碎，血色罗裙翻酒污。

今年欢笑复明年，秋月春风等闲度。

弟走从军阿姨死，暮去朝来颜色故。

门前冷落鞍马稀，老大嫁作商人妇。

商人重利轻别离，前月浮梁买茶去。

去来江口守空船，绕船明月江水寒。

夜深忽梦少年事，梦啼妆泪红阑干。

我闻琵琶已叹息，又闻此语重唧唧。

同是天涯沦落人，相逢何必曾相识！

我从去年辞帝京，谪居卧病浔阳城。

浔阳地僻无音乐，终岁不闻丝竹声。

住近湓江地低湿，黄芦苦竹绕宅生。

其间旦暮闻何物？杜鹃啼血猿哀鸣。

春江花朝秋月夜，往往取酒还独倾。

岂无山歌与村笛？呕哑嘲哳难为听。

今夜闻君琵琶语，如听仙乐耳暂明。

莫辞更坐弹一曲，为君翻作《琵琶行》。

感我此言良久立，却坐促弦弦转急。

凄凄不似向前声，满座重闻皆掩泣。

座中泣下谁最多？江州司马青衫湿。

Preface (序): 元和十年，予左迁九江郡司马。明年秋，送客湓浦口，闻舟中夜弹琵琶者……凡六百一十六言，命曰《琵琶行》。

Appendix B · Sources & credits

Notes on this deck

Sources

Original: 白居易《琵琶行》, 816 CE. Text follows the standard modern school edition (人民教育出版社通行本); a handful of variant characters exist across editions.
Translation: the English text throughout is a fresh literary rendering made for this deck — free verse, images and rhythm preserved, not a word-for-word gloss.
Historical anchors: Yuanhe 10–11 (815–816), Jiangzhou/Jiujiang, the Music Bureau, Fuliang and the tea trade, Toad Mound, Wuling, the rank-colour system of Tang official dress.

Using this file

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Song of the Pipa

What this lesson is for

Learning objectives

How to run the session

Before the poem: a career, a demotion, a river

Timeline

Why the river matters

Six beats, one long night

A farewell with no music

A sound from the water

She is summoned

Music as autobiography

The poet confesses

One more piece

Two lines that set the whole poem in motion

The text

Teaching notes

She does not walk on; she is dragged on

The text

Teaching notes

The poem does not describe the pipa. It performs it.

Teaching notes

Activity · 5 minutes

What else the poem makes of that sound

The sound-repertoire

Teaching notes

"Here, no sound at all says more than sound"

The text

Teaching notes

A career told backward, in four lines

The text

Teaching notes

Two strangers at the far edge of the world

Why these lines are the poem

Teaching notes

The poet stops describing her and describes himself

The text

Teaching notes

The poem ends with the poet's wet sleeve

The text

Teaching notes

Six techniques worth stealing

Techniques

Teaching notes

Five expressions to steal

Language work

Vocabulary worth the detour

Eight questions

Teacher

Five questions with no clean answers

Running the discussion

Take the poem out of the classroom

Core task (choose one)

Optional / extension

The Chinese original, all forty-four couplets

Notes on this deck

Sources

Using this file

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