Babble and Cant and Flummery

Why settle for bullshit artists when you could have bullshit artistes?

A couple years ago, before I ever started translating Yuan sanqu (or any other poetry) for fun, I heard a minimalist electronic setting of a few sanqu by Dou Wei 窦唯 and Zhao Jian 朝简 that starts off with a real scorcher:

譏時

鋪眉苫眼早三公，
裸袖揎拳享萬鍾，
胡言亂語成時用。
大綱來都是哄！

The Times We Live In

Cozen. Flatter. Ingratiate —
The Three High Offices of state.
Bared fists and naked thuggery
Net a seven-figure salary,
And babble’s often all you’ll hear of late.
It’s all just cant and flummery!

— Zhang Mingshan 張鳴善, fl. 14th century

This draft is kind of a failure, or at least not yet a success: the first half of the lyric, which I’ve translated here, works well enough, but the second half is a lot denser, and I think the footnotes would probably outweigh the payoff.¹ Can’t win them all, I guess.

---

“I wish life was like the movies. Next shot, title card: ‘MANY YEARS LATER.’”

But it did remind me of something else — a passage from the late-1989 (!) Not Even Human (千万别把我当人) by Wang Shuo 王朔, the king of “lowlife lit” 痞子文学, in which the residents of a Beijing hutong welcome a visiting official in the highest fashion they can manage. I hope you’ll forgive the contemporaneity. It’s just too good:

…Tears in her eyes, Yuanbao's mother addressed the Big Guy:

“Esteemed renowned revered and dearly beloved helmsman mentor pioneer trailblazer shining beacon blazing firebrand demon-revealing mirror cur-walloping club daddy mommy grandma grandpaterfamilias primal progenitor primate ancestor Supreme Sage on High Ascended Jade Emperor Hearer of the World's Cries and Generalissimo!

“Though every day brings a myriad matters and a million new challenges and hardships hard time hard work hard to quit your heavy habit your weighty burden your breakneck pace your breathtaking speed your lofty heights, in the driver's seat and outside the box as you raise up-lifting up-cheering up-holding justice dispelling evil curing rheumatism treating cold sweats lengthening strengthening and good for the kidneys nourishing the brain body-building liver-boosting stomach-soothing pain-killing cough-suppressing and makes you reg'lar,

“You personally in person your very own self on your lonesome took the initiative to make the effort to find the time to clear your schedule to take a moment to deign to descend to condescend to stoop to lowering yourself to our level to visit tour explore reconnoiter patrol inspect investigate inquire interrogate grill squeeze pump and press every last scrap of information out of our little alley, which is a great consolation a great inspiration a great stimulation a great comfort a great expression of trust a great sign of just how much you care and a great honor for us little people common people lowly people nobodies and crum-bums sons and bastards scraggy weeds puling whelps mewling kittens hoi polloi mindless proles madding crowd and simple folk.

“We are absolutely overjoyed deeply touched extremely anxious profoundly humbled utterly delighted jumping for joy sincerely flattered truly grateful genuinely moved to tears just beside ourselves utterly at a loss for words,
a thousand words and a million sentences a thousand songs of praise and a million model operas a thousand mountains and a million lakes a thousand phrases and a million little letters all blend into a cry that rises to the heavens top-of-the-lungs rolls forth like thunder, resonating and resounding around the rafters for three days afterwards, ear-splitting earth-shaking music to the ears, beautiful beyond compare, intoxicating inebriating leaving the listener numb to carnal temptation, the overriding overarching preeminent predominant paramount rallying cry of our age: HAIL! HAIL! ALL HAIL! HAIL! HAIL! A—”

Her eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted dead away, having not taken a single breath throughout any of this. Auntie Li stepped forward and took over, rapid-fire and on full automatic:

“If it wasn’t for you we’d still be twisting and turning and churning and roiling and gyring and gimbling and gibbering and jabbering in the dark the dank the dirt the dust the dustbin the ashheap the ashpile the ashtray of history, hiding in caves, cowering in crevices, up the creek and stuck between the the frying-pan and the fire and the devil and the deep blue sea—”

Auntie Li's eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted dead away, having not taken a single breath throughout any of this. Yuanfeng stepped forward:

“You are our light our hope our future our role model our banner our battle-drum our victory success pride and joy and triumph, oh paradise oh pure land oh wise one magician wizard protector and savior, oh sun oh moon oh stars oh brilliant oh radiant oh gloriou—”

Yuanfeng's eyes rolled back and he fainted. Inky took over:

“Eagle-eyed lion-hearted brass-balled iron-willed nerves of steel fists of fury guided warhead! Our rock our touchstone our tombstone our Great Wall! If it wasn't for you we’d be sorry and freezing and starving and screaming and altogether screwed, we’d be down and out and in the gutter, beat up kicked down pushed around and thoroughly disrespected, we’d —”

“All right, all right,” the Big Guy said, smiling pleasantly. “That's enough of that — we don't want you fainting on us too.
“Besides. You could all wear yourselves out with kind words and honeyed words and wingèd words and praise and paeans and panegyrics and hosannas, but I promise you — I've heard it all before.”

(With apologies to George Carlin and thanks to Kate Lingley for kibitzing about an earlier draft of the Zhang Mingshan lyric, and to cg31 for catching an embarrassing typo.)

1. The second stanza gets a lot denser in a way that doesn’t lend itself to unobtrusive translation. This is probably a limitation of my approach, particularly my general allergy to encumbrances in literary translations — though who knows; maybe inspiration will strike as soon as I hit “Post” — but if you’re wondering what you’re missing:

說英雄誰是英雄？
五眼鷄岐山鳴鳳，
兩頭蛇南陽卧龍，
三脚貓渭水飛熊。

They talk about heroes — well, who’s a hero?
[They’d say]
A five-eyed rooster was the phoenix of Mount Qi,
A two-headed snake was a dragon in disguise,
Or a three-legged cat was the “non-bear” of the Wei!

Besides continuing the first stanza’s pattern of having a number in every line but the last — did you spot the hidden “ten?” — these are all classical allusions:

• "Phoenix of Mount Qi" 岐山鳴鳳 - in the Discourses of the States 國語 there's a reference to a phoenix on Mt. Qi, a symbol of virtue, ability, and all-around worthiness.

• “Dragon in disguise” 南陽卧龍 - this is Zhuge Liang 諸葛亮, the historical Shu Han 蜀漢 strategist portrayed in the novel Three Kingdoms 三國志通俗演義 (which didn’t exist yet, though its source materials did) as a sort of Merlin figure.

• “Non-bear of the Wei”渭水飛（非）熊 — this is Jiang Ziya 姜子牙, the Zhou 周 general who helped bring down the Shang 商 dynasty, via a bad pun. (A diviner had told King Wen that if he went hunting on the north bank of the Wei river, he would catch something wonderful — but not a dragon, and not a tiger, and not a bear.) As far as I can tell, the purpose of changing “non-” 非 to the homophonous “flying” 飛 is consistency with “singing phoenix” 鳴鳳 and “hiding dragon” 臥龍, the latter just meaning “undiscovered genius.”

But there’s another layer to these lines too:

• Drew Gibson pointed out on Bluesky that a “two-headed snake” 兩頭蛇 was considered such a baleful animal that anyone who saw one would drop dead.

• “Five-eyed rooster” 五眼鷄 sounds like 烏眼雞, “black-eyed rooster,” meaning either a look of bitter hatred or, by extension, both hater and hatee.

• And according to the 16th-century bibliophile Lang Ying 郎瑛, a “three-legged cat” 三腳貓 was someone who couldn’t do anything right (俗以事不盡善者，謂之三腳貓), though he does note, in fairness, that during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor there was a Daoist monk in Nanjing who kept a three-legged cat that was an excellent mouser despite not being able to walk right (極善捕鼠而走不成步).

Oh, and if you were wondering, “seven-figure salary” is literally “ten thousand [large measures of grain],” i.e. a ludicrously high official salary. I was trying to keep the numbers going, but “seven-figure salary” sounds way too contemporary and it probably won’t survive into future drafts.