Snow
Liang Shiqiu
Li Bai’s poem line: “The snow flake in the Yan Hill is as big as a sheet of bed mat” is unreliable. It’s an exaggeration by the poet just as “White hair trails three thousand zhang” is. According to the scientific reports, the crystallization of a snow flake depends upon the temperature conditions of time and place. The largest flake recorded so far is three to four inches in diameter. If a snow flake is as big as a bed sheet, then it would be big enough to cover a man from head to foot. So long as snow does not bring with it disaster, the heavier, the better. When it is sleeting hard like salt shaking from the air, or like willow catkins slowly sailing down, it’s really very interesting. There is nobody who does not like it. Some like rain, and others hate it. But I have never heard who disliked snow. Even in a world of ice and snow, Eskimos build their small domes with snow blocks, which are very warm to live in.
To enjoy snow, first of all, you should not go hungry. Otherwise, when it is snowing and the wind is blowing, you may become short of breath. How could you relax and enjoy the mood and carefully count “One flake, one flake, and another flake of snow…fall into the plum blossoms and disappear”? During the Later Han Dynasty, there was a man called Yuan’an, when the heavy snow blocked his room door and there was no way out, people said he was dead. Thus Luoyang Prefecture ordered the snow to be cleared and, surprisingly, he was found lying in the room, stiff. When asked why he did not come out, he said, “When heavy snow is falling and everyone is hungry, it is not right to bother others.” This old man was charmingly naïve, for when he was hungry, he guessed others were also hungry. I believe that when Yuan’an was lying there stiff, he mustn’t have murmured the poem line “Blown by the wind, the snow flakes are falling like flowers.” The prince of the Jing Dynasty lived in seclusion in the mountains. One night when snow stopped falling and a clear moon was shining, he suddenly thought of his friend Dai Andao who was far away in Zhao. So he went by boat to see him at once. After a whole night of sailing, he arrived only to find that he could not enter; thus he returned. If there had been no heavy snow fall, he would not have had such a fantastic zest for sure. But if he had not even had enough thick gruel to eat, he would not have been so refined in his manner as to see his friend at night in vain. As to the refinement of Xie Anshi who chanted poems with his children while snowing it is considered more of a matter in a rich family.
