Chinese poem illustration: 终南望余雪/ Gaze at Melting Snow on South Mountain by Zu Yong

望终南余雪

Full video also available at Bilibili: 望终南余雪

The great Chang’an city and the vast South Mountain together make the snow great and unique, make this poem one of the best Tang poems about snow.

Zhongnan(终南) or South Mountain(南山) firstly appeared in Book of Songs(诗经) roughly 2500-3000 years from now. Since that time , Zhongnan becomes the ultimate term of big mountain, an ambitious life goal, the place most close to heaven, a place of immortals and divinity, a place for hermit…the image and allusion of Zhongnan appears in Chinese literature in every generations, its concept and metaphor changes accordingly.

终南望余雪
祖咏

终南阴岭秀,
积雪浮云端。
林表明霁色,
城中增暮寒。

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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