Zhou Zuoren's "The Rivulet" (1919)

Zhou Zuoren 周作人(1885-1967), brother of world-famous writer Lu Xun 魯迅, is credited with writing one of China's first vernacular poems in modernity. The poem "The Rivulet" 小河, appeared on the first page of the extremely influential journal New Youth 新青年 in 1919 (6.2: 91-95), a publication begun in 1915 in Shanghai by 陳獨秀 with the initial purpose of promoting science, democracy and the Chinese vernacular. Zhou remarks that his creation was influenced by the French symbolists (particularly Baudelaire's "poeme en prose") and made use of the poetic trope xing 興, a staple of classical Chinese lyrical imagery.

The river's dramatic course, now flowing, now damned, is an apt metaphor for the creative energies of its poet or a cultural commentary on the artistic state of his troubled era. The following section from the beginning of the poem presents the river in its periods of both freedom and blockage reflected in the halting, prosaic style of its author. At first, the flow of the rivulet is conveyed by a relatively consistant, rhythmic exposition. After the farmer, has damned it up, though, the prose, like the rivulet, clogs. The fifth verse with its repetition of conflictive prepositions (上, 下) and its emphatic use of negative particles (不, 又不) mimics the turbulent and confined nature of the waters that now chaotically churn (亂轉) in the face of their blockage.

一条小河，稳稳的向前流动。
经过的地方，两面全是乌黑的土，
生满了红的花，碧绿的叶，黄的果实。
一个农夫背了锄来，在小河中间筑起一 道堰。
下流干了，上流的水被堰拦着，下来不得，不得前进，又不能退回 ，水只在堰前乱转。

A rivulet, flows steadily on.
Sooty-colored shores hug its sides,
filled with the growth of red flowers, green leaves, and yellow fruit.
A farmer comes, shouldering a hoe to damn up the rivulet.
The trickle drains away, and the waters block up, it does not flow down or proceed forward, and yet it still can not move back, the waters just churn confusedly before the damn.