Story About 回文诗 （circling poem）

Yesterday, we talked about the回文诗 （circling poem）. A famous author was a girl lived during 东晋East Jin Dynasty（304－439 AD.）

Her name was 苏蕙（Su Hui）the same surname with me. Her poems was weaved in a piece of silk named 璇玑图when you type this three characters in Google search, you may find plenty websites and images about it. There were many other回文诗 （circling poem）but this one was the most famous one.

Each of the ancient poems had four sentences, and each sentence had seven characters. The tradition of Chinese writing material started from top right corner. The different of circling poem is that you can start from first, second, third or any of the character. Started from different character, it would be a different poem. If you read from 1^st character it would ended in 7^th character of every sentence. If you start from 2^nd, it would ended on the 1^st character of next group of characters. It also can be read like:

So altogether, this picture give us 7,958 pieces of poetry.

When Su Hui was 16, she married an officer Dou Tao. Later, her husband was assigned to other place; it is normal in ancient China, a high rank officer always being assigned to a remote country, because it was a large empire. The real power was not in the hand of aristocrat but in hand of high rank officers that appointed by emperor himself. These high rank officers had to swap place every few years by the new assignment of emperor, for if they stayed in one place too long, they might organise their own authority.

When Su Hui found that her husband had taken a concubine Zhao Yang-Tai, she was so angry and beaten Zhao badly, it make Dou Tao unhappy, for at that time to take concubine was normal. Not only this, as so many officer might live in remote country or on the road for a long period, the government had prepared public prostitute for them. (We will talk this in later post.) In additional, Zhao Yang-Tai speak ill of Su Hui in the ear of Dou Tao. Then Dou Tao went to his appointed post only carried the concubine Zhao Yang-Tai.

Su Hui stayed at home with regret and she wrote this 回文诗 （circling poem）. When her husband read it, he was moved and regret too, he invited Su Hui to his office resume their love. (The ancient Chinese office was called 府, the officer worked in front house and lived in other houses like below.)