We Shouldn't Forget Her Entirely
We shouldn’t forget her entirely.
This isn’t the promised land,
but she has been our sanctuary.
The mountains singing since ancient times,
the hundred thousand rockings of the cradle.
Sons of men in narrow-cuffed trousers
packing nothing but their dignity and freedom
to go turn the rumbling millstone of life and death.
They died for their land and for glory
and there is always someone weeping when their deeds are recited
as if it were only yesterday.
What could be more worthy of admiration
than a funeral pyre on a mountaintop:
nothing to laugh at, for even death
can be a world of difference.
O steeds of Gunyilada, am I still reflected
in the calm centres of your eyes?
Greetings to you, children of Guhoh and Chönieh,
descendants of heroes.
The planet’s waters
glimmer under the sun.
Don’t go telling everyone
about this sanctuary of mine.
Notes:
‘Narrow-cuffed trousers’ refers to a traditional style of trousers worn by men of the Yi (or Nuoso) ethnic minority in China. ‘
Funeral pyre on a mountaintop’ refers to the traditional funeral practice of the Yi people.
The Gunyilada Grand Canyon is part of the Yi people’s traditional homeland in the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southern Sichuan Province, and Guhoh and Chönieh refer to two of their legendary ancestral lineages. The names are transliterated here in a way that roughly approximates their pronunciation in the Yi language, instead of their pronunciation in Mandarin.
About the translators
Austin Woerner is a Creative Fellow in Chinese-English literary translation at the University of Leeds.
Margaret Yuanyuan Xu is a lecturer at Xihua University in Chengdu. She was a visiting scholar at University of Leeds in 2024.