Source: The China Post (1/2/17)
President’s spring couplet panned by literati
By Sun Hsin Hsuan
President Tsai Ing-wen’s unusual use of Taiwanese for an annual spring couplet on Sunday has come under fire — not for its language, but for what literature critics have described as its “incorrect” structure.
National Museum of Taiwanese Literature head Liao Chen-fu (廖振富), while praising the president for “bringing public awareness to Taiwanese literature,” gave a poor review of the couplet itself, saying: “The president’s spring couplets could probably count as two lines of new year greetings, but couplets? Not so much.”
Spring couplets are two of lines of poetry that are governed by a set of complex rules.
Couplets are required to have the same number of Chinese characters in both lines, while the lexical category of each character must be the same as its corresponding character, and the tone pattern of one line must be the inverse of the other.
The president’s spring couplet was based on a poem by Lai He (賴和), the so-called “father of modern Taiwanese literature,” borrowing two lines from one of Lai’s poems celebrating spring and happiness.
But unlike the original piece, in which both lines are comprised of seven characters, the president’s couplet picked the first four characters in Lai’s first line, and then the first, third, sixth and seventh characters to make up the second part of the president’s spring couplet.
This cherry-picking changed the lexical category and the tone pattern of Lai’s original work — violating the traditional rules for couplets.
The president was also criticized for a “semantically meaningless” transliteration of the poem’s first line.
Some critics insisted that “Ji ji yo yo” was the correct transliteration for the first four characters in the first line of Lai’s original piece, rather than the “Ji ji ran ran” used by Tsai.
Writer Chang Ta-chuen (張大春) mocked the president’s transliteration on social media, saying “Didn’t your parents teach you how to read?”
He added that the Presidential Office had “used completely the wrong character.”
Although the characters “Ran” and “Yo” look similar, “Ran” bears the meaning of grow and rise, while “Yo” when used following “Ji” means freedom, free-spirits, and relaxation.
‘Respect different opinions’
But Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) defended the transliteration, saying it had opted for “Ran” as this was used in versions of the poem published by the official Lai He Foundation.
Huang added that the Presidential Office “respects different opinions” but had decided to stick to Lai He Foundation’s version “to greet nationals a happy new year, and a promising future for the nation.”
Founder of the Lai He Foundation and Lai He’s grandson Lai Yueh-yen (賴悅顏) said the quoting of Taiwanese literature in the national spring couplet should be praised, adding that he too “respects other experts’ perspective” on the matter.