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hi,

i have this jar with writing on the back, im wondering if anyone can decipher it?

thanks for the help,

bob.

Poetry.. the 4 on the right : Wind, rain, still have a good harvest.
Hope this helps
Ernest

thanks, is the whole thing poetry or just the main 4 characters?

I hate it when members posted Chinese inscriptions from a piece of art (painting, ceramic, etc.) without posting the whole piece and asked for assistance in translations. I believe it is very unfair for the members who would try to help because very often it would put them in a BIG disadvantage because they simply cannot view the whole piece of art and as a result they would interpret the Chinese characters incorrectly.

In this case I am almost certain there should be a painting (drawing) on the other side of this jar showing one or two shepherds (probably boys) riding or shepherding an ox (or two oxen).

I must applaud the other member's courage in attempting to translate the title (large four Chinese characters showing on the jar) or the effort of whoever was helping him in translating such four-character phrase. The translation of the first two characters (from right to left) is indeed correct (wind, rain). Unfortunately, the reason Chinese language is such a difficult language to learn is although you may understand the meaning of each individual character yet when two or more characters were combined to form compound phrases (usually two word-, three word-, four word-, etc.) the meaning of such compound phrases would sometimes totally differ than that of all the combined characters. Some times many such Chinese phrases would be difficult for even native Chinese speaking people to interpret (including myself). No wonder in the past when I met two very nice forum members from this and other forum and they were very good with the Chinese language, yet when I tried to write them with compound phrases, I did not believe they understood a single phrase I said. I still remember when I was young, I have to learn many of the four-character phrases and each phrase has a story behind it and we would have to buy a special dictionary and learned each phrase by reading and understanding each story behind the origin of such a phrase. It is almost like a foreign language to even Chinese-speaking people.

The four-character phrase listed on the jar (from right to left) is:

風雨歸牧 (feng yu gui mu)

Feng - Wind
Yu - Rain
Gui - Return (usually mean returning home or homeland)
Mu - Shepherd

I do not know how the other member came up with "a good harvest". It is very possible that his translation may be correct too.

There are many famous Chinese paintings (ancient or modern) that have such a title. I am posting one of the famous one here for everybody to enjoy. (http://www2.kuas.edu.tw/edu/ge9699/962/962-a/A33-02.pdf)

Loosely translated, the four-word phrase means “The shepherd (s) is/are returning home from jis/their shepherding trip(s) because of the bad weather (wind and rain)”.

However, I would like to translate the title as:

“Homeward Bound from Shepherding in the midst of Thunderstorm”.

Of course, there would be many other acceptable translations and most likely many would be much better than mine since I have become rusty in my “translating” skills although I had once translated English poems into Chinese, got published in Chinese newspapers and got paid for them. However, there was a long time ago.

Enjoy.

Bill

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