Mao Zedong - Shooing Away the God of Epidemics

Chinese Literature Podcast

This week looks a poem by Mao Zedong celebrating the communist defeat of a tiny parasite. "Shooing Away the God of Epidemics" was written in 1956 upon Mao hearing that a county in Jiangxi had eliminated all their blood flukes.

#1

China’s green waters and the blue mountains are so numerous

but even the great ancient Chinese medical theorist Hua Tou is unable to take care of this little worm,

The thousand villages are covered in vines and peppered with their leaking shit,

the ten thousand homes are abandoned, only ghosts sing inside them.

He sits on the Earth everyday and walks 80,000 miles,

He roams through the heavens and looks out the distance at the thousand rivers.

China’s Orion constellation desires to ask the God of Epidemics about it,

happiness and hopelessness are all the same as time goes by.

其一

绿水青山枉自11多，华佗2无奈小虫何！

千村薜荔3人遗矢12，万户萧疏13鬼唱歌。

坐地日行八万里，巡天14遥看一千河。

牛郎4欲问瘟神事，一样悲欢15逐逝波5。

#2

A spring wind blows through a billion poplar and willow branches,

the 600 million Chinese of today live like the sage kings of old, Yao and Shun.

Showers of red petals, and our fulfilled hearts have been translated into waves,

the green mountain has been carefully transformed into bridges.

High up, the people are using their silvery hoes to dig canals,

down low, they are using their iron biceps to shake China’s three great rivers.

May I ask, Old Man epidemic, where will you go, now [that communism has solved all problems]

maybe you can use the light from the superstitious paper money the people used to burn to light your way out of here.

其二

春风杨柳万千条22，六亿神州尽舜尧6。

红雨7随心16翻作17浪，青山着意18化为桥。

天连五岭银锄18落，地动三河8铁臂20摇。

借问21瘟君欲何往，纸船明烛9照天烧。