The charm of snow lies in its covering up everything on the ground with no exceptions. During a winter night when you embrace your quilt to sleep, you can feel a chilly cold so you curl up motionless. But when you open your eyes the next morning, all the openings of the curtains and the windows flash with a strong light, very different from usual days. When you open the window and look outside, – oh, what a vast expanse of whiteness! The bamboo branches and pine leaves are burdened with piles of white snow. Even the old tree branches are lined with silver. Both rich families and poor families are equally covered by it. There is no difference between the carved balustrades and marble steps, earth jars and mulberry pivots. All the pits and ditches, the dried twigs and broken stalks in the ice, the waste and bits on the road are covered with the "crane's cloak" thrown down by the God. Snow is so unselfish, while it decorates the fine things, it covers all the filth as well despite the fact that it will not cover them for too long.
Snow is a benefit to man in farming. We live upon the fate of the Gods and we have relied upon the weather since ancient times. "When the sky is cloudy, rain will fall…Since the earth has benefited from it and it will grow grains for man." The old saying goes, "A timely snow promises a good harvest," which means that the piles of snow this winter will bring a rich harvest next year. There is no need for "falling heavy snow up to ox's eye". Just one-chi thick is enough. Still others say that snow is good for wheat and can kill insects because the insects hatch their eggs on the ground. Where the snow in one-chi deep, it will penetrate one-zhang into the ground and even the most destructive insects cannot avoid the freeze. I myself have had such an experience when I planted two balustrades of Chinese herbaceous peony. Under the eave of my study there grew a bed of fragrant plantain lily, after several heavy snow falls, I swept it and piled it over the balustrades and flower beds. It could not only protect the flowers' roots from being frozen, but in the next spring after being melted, it was a natural irrigation. When the earth regained its life, the new buds gave birth to vigorous fresh shoots and blooming flowers. At that time, I felt it was even better than building a snow man.
It is said that there was a hero who composed a poem: "Yellow dogs become white, and white dogs swollen; on going out of the door, it's unified domain that can be seen." The old saying goes that, "A big official likes to fabricate poems," to say nothing of a hero when he felt on top of the world. This poem is by no means without a subtle nature, except its laughable rudeness. Maybe, it has nothing to do with his background and temperament. According to legend, the Emperor of France, Louise the Fourteenth, once wrote a three-stanza poem. He was very much proud of it. When he asked the opinion from the poet critic Boire, the latter said, "Your Majesty is all power; you want to compose an inelegant verse and you are successful." The "A Song of the Snow" by the hero may well be regarded as a very outstanding inelegant verse as well.
