Withered Vines, Old Tree, Evening Raven

馬致遠【天淨沙○秋思】

　　枯藤老樹昏鴉，小橋流水人家，古道西風瘦馬。夕陽西下，斷腸人在天涯。

Once a while, we seemed to come across scenes the ancient poets had once described.

One evening last early winter, looking from my backyard, I happened to see a raven quietly relaxing on an old tree, which was surrounded by the vineyard with withered grapevines. The scene instantly reminded me the famous poem by Ma Chih Yuan from the Yuan Dynasty, "koo tern, lao shu, huern yah", or withered vine, old tree, evening raven. I posted my humble story in our class website. Our classmate, Wei, responded to it and asked if I had also seen the "hsiao chyao", (little bridge), "liu suei" (flowing creek) or "suo ma" (lean horse).

Last month, we took a trip to Egypt and Jordan with our classmates. While in Jordan, we tour the renowned ancient treasure site, Petra. We rode on those lean, somewhat emaciated horses along the ancient path against dusty western wind. Over there, I then remembered the other piece of the poem, "goo dau" (ancient path), "see fuong" (western wind), "suo ma" (lean horse).

In the countryside of our town, Napa Valley, there are many flowing creeks. The country roads often run between the hillside and creeks and we see little bridges crossing the creeks lead to the people's houses. So I have often seen "hsio chyao", "liu suei" and "ren-jia" during outings.

Therefore, I had seen the scenes which were described by Ma Chih Yuan in his autumn nostalgia"Tien Jing Sah", although I was not a "duan chang ren", nor wondering around the "tien yiah", or the earth corner.