Climbing High / Du Fu, 登高

Du Fu's climbing high: Text, Pinyin, and Translation

Du Fu's climbing high: Text, Pinyin, and Translation with original text, pinyin, a literal rendering, a readable translation, source location, key terms, and a careful modern reading.

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Du Fu Climbing High original Chinese pinyin translation meaning

Climbing High, Du Fu, 登高: read "風急天高猿嘯哀，渚清沙白鳥飛迴。無邊落木蕭蕭下，不盡長江滾滾來。萬里..." before the English explanation.

Original text

風急天高猿嘯哀，渚清沙白鳥飛迴。無邊落木蕭蕭下，不盡長江滾滾來。萬里悲秋常作客，百年多病獨登臺。艱難苦恨繁霜鬢，潦倒新停濁酒杯。

Feng ji tian gao yuan xiao ai, zhu qing sha bai niao fei hui. Wu bian luo mu xiao xiao xia, bu jin Changjiang gun gun lai. Wan li bei qiu chang zuo ke, bai nian duo bing du deng tai. Jian nan ku hen fan shuang bin, liao dao xin ting zhuo jiu bei.

Literal layer

The wind is urgent, the sky high, the gibbons cry mournfully; the islet is clear, the sand white, birds fly circling back. Boundless falling leaves descend rustling; the endless Yangtze comes rolling on. Ten thousand miles away, grieving autumn, I am often a guest; in a hundred years of much illness, I climb the terrace alone. Hardships and bitter regrets have thickened my frost-white temples; fallen low, I have newly stopped the cup of muddy wine.

Readable layer

Du Fu's Climbing High turns a high autumn view into exile, illness, age, hardship, and restraint, making landscape and biography press together line by line.

Poem Written after Rain from The Metropolitan Museum of Art open-access collection — **Poem Written after Rain; Ju Jie; Bequest of John M. Crawford Jr., 1988; The Metropolitan Museum of Art.**Poem Written after Rain is used as a public-domain poem or landscape surface for line-order reading on Du Fu's climbing high. The fit is semantic: the page asks readers to inspect Du Fu, 登高 and the term deng gao, while the image remains illustrative rather than proof of the exact manuscript, author portrait, or historical scene.

Reader focus

What this page helps you decide

Du Fu's Climbing High is a high-view poem, but its center is not scenic pleasure. The opening couplets create a sharply exposed autumn world: urgent wind, high sky, mournful gibbons, clear islet, white sand, circling birds, falling leaves, and the rolling Yangtze. The poem then turns inward. The speaker is far from home, often a guest, sick, aging, alone, and newly unable to drink. The view becomes a pressure map of life.

Watch deng gao, luo mu, Changjiang; these terms decide where the literal layer and the readable layer separate.
Compare this page with Li Bai's Mount Lu waterfall before using high scenery as a generic symbol of grandeur.

The Poem Before Paraphrase

This block uses Climbing High, Du Fu, 登高 as the anchor, with "風急天高猿嘯哀，渚清沙白鳥飛迴。無邊落木蕭蕭下，不盡長江滾滾..." kept in front of the explanation.

Full Text: The page uses all eight lines because the regulated poem builds through paired pressure. The first half opens the landscape. The second half shows why the high place hurts: distance, autumn grief, guesthood, illness, age, hardship, and the loss of wine as comfort.

Urgent Wind And High Sky: Feng ji and tian gao make the scene feel exposed. The weather is not gentle. The gibbon cries add grief before the speaker names grief directly. The first line already makes the height emotionally sharp.

Clear Islet, White Sand: Zhu qing sha bai gives precision and brightness, while birds fly back in circles. The clarity is beautiful, but it is not soothing. The circling motion keeps the scene restless, matching the poem's later sense of being unable to settle.

Falling Leaves And Yangtze: Wu bian and bu jin make the third and fourth lines feel vast. Leaves fall without boundary; the Yangtze comes without end. The landscape is both descending and advancing, which lets autumn become a force rather than a backdrop.

Images, Sound, And Emotional Turn

Guesthood And Illness: Wan li and bai nian bring the poem into human scale. The speaker is far away and often a guest, while illness has followed him through the years. Climbing high alone is therefore not a leisure outing; it is a moment of exposed self-recognition.

Stopping The Wine Cup: Xin ting zhuo jiu bei is easy to miss. Wine often appears as relief in poetry, but here the cup has newly stopped. The speaker's decline includes the loss of one ordinary consolation. That final detail makes the poem more bodily and less abstract.

Why The View Turns Inward: The poem does not abandon landscape when it turns to guesthood and illness. The exposed height has prepared that inward turn. Wind, sky, gibbon cries, circling birds, falling leaves, and river movement all make the speaker's condition visible before he names it. The landscape is therefore evidence, not decoration.

Du Fu's climbing high Translation Limit: This working translation keeps guest, hundred years, frost temples, and muddy wine because these details anchor the poem in age and circumstance. A smoother English paraphrase could sound elegant, but it would lose the poem's compression of public hardship and private body.

Keep the term set visible here: deng gao, luo mu, Changjiang. The reading changes if one of these terms is translated too smoothly.

Translation Choices To Keep Visible

Du Fu's climbing high Reading Payoff: This page differs from Li Bai's Mount Lu waterfall because Du Fu uses height to expose suffering rather than to intensify wonder. It differs from Gao Shi's farewell poem because comfort is not offered here. The article gives readers a source-based way to read the famous falling leaves and Yangtze couplet inside the whole poem's illness and exile structure.

Du Fu's climbing high Source Checkpoint: Let the poem move line by line before paraphrase begins: Climbing High, Du Fu, 登高, opening with "風急天高猿嘯哀，渚清沙白鳥飛迴。無邊落木蕭蕭下，不盡長江...". Keep deng gao beside the Chinese wording before accepting the readable English. On this page the source anchor is doing real work: it tells the reader where the claim begins, which phrase is being interpreted, and why the explanation should stay narrower than a later proverb or author label.

Du Fu's climbing high Reader Decision: The practical decision is whether the reader can watch image order, sound, and the emotional turn. Compare deng gao with luo mu, then ask which English phrase compresses the most. That check blocks the common mistake of summarizing the feeling before seeing how the lines create it; it also gives the page a finish line, so the reader leaves with a source habit rather than a smoother slogan.

The reading should end in one practical move: Compare this page with Li Bai's Mount Lu waterfall before using high scenery as a generic symbol of grandeur.

Next reading

Links chosen for reading movement

Li Bai's Waterfall At Mount Lu Text, Pinyin, and TranslationFrom Du Fu's climbing high, open Li Bai's Waterfall At Mount Lu Text, Pinyin, and Translation to compare deng gao with a second checked passage; the path starts from Du Fu, 登高, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.Gao Shi's Farewell Poem Text, Pinyin, and TranslationFrom Du Fu's climbing high, open Gao Shi's Farewell Poem Text, Pinyin, and Translation to test the translation boundary against a neighboring source; the path starts from Du Fu, 登高, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.Du Fu's Moonlit Night Text, Pinyin, and TranslationFrom Du Fu's climbing high, open Du Fu's Moonlit Night Text, Pinyin, and Translation to move from this wording to a concrete reader workflow; the path starts from Du Fu, 登高, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.Liu Zongyuan's River Snow Text, Pinyin, and TranslationFrom Du Fu's climbing high, open Liu Zongyuan's River Snow Text, Pinyin, and Translation to keep the next step tied to source evidence instead of a loose related list; the path starts from Du Fu, 登高, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.