Quick Answer: What Is The Elderly Man of Xinfeng About?
The Elderly Man of Xinfeng (新丰折臂翁, Xīnfēng Zhébì Wēng) is a poem by Bai Juyi (白居易, Bái Jūyì) about a man who broke his own arm to avoid being sent on a Tang military expedition.[1]
- The encounter: At eighty-eight, he tells the narrator how his injury came about.
- The choice: He weighed the use of one arm against the chance of returning alive.
- The judgment: The ending asks what the pursuit of frontier honours did to the people who had to fight.[1]
The injury is a lasting cost of the levy even though the man never reached the battlefield.[1]
The narrator sees an old man leaning on a descendant near a shop. That ordinary scene poses two questions. How long has the man lived with the injury, and how did it happen? The answers take the reader from one person’s arm to a court decision made decades earlier.
The Elderly Man of Xinfeng in Chinese and English
The Complete Tang Poems text has the subtitle “A warning against seeking frontier achievements.” The following sense translation preserves the shifts between narrator, old man and closing address.[1]
| Chinese | English sense |
|---|---|
| 新丰老翁八十八，头鬓眉须皆似雪。 | The old man of Xinfeng is eighty-eight. His hair, brows and beard are white as snow. |
| 玄孙扶向店前行，左臂凭肩右臂折。 | His great-great-grandchild helps him walk past a shop. His left arm rests on a shoulder. His right arm is broken. |
| 问翁臂折来几年，兼问致折何因缘。 | I ask how long the arm has been broken and what caused it. |
| 翁云贯属新丰县，生逢圣代无征战。 | He says he is from Xinfeng County and was born in a reign without campaigns. |
| 惯听梨园歌管声，不识旗枪与弓箭。 | I knew the Pear Garden’s songs and pipes, and knew nothing of banners, spears, bows or arrows. |
| 无何天宝大征兵，户有三丁点一丁。 | Then came a great levy in the Tianbao (天宝, Tiānbǎo) era. From households with three men of service age, one was called. |
| 点得驱将何处去，五月万里云南行。 | Where were the men taken? In the fifth month, far away to Yunnan. |
| 闻道云南有泸水，椒花落时瘴烟起。 | We heard of the Lu River in Yunnan, where unhealthy vapours rose as the pepper blossoms fell. |
| 大军徒涉水如汤，未过十人二三死。 | Troops waded into water hot as broth. Before crossing, two or three in ten died. |
| 村南村北哭声哀，儿别爷娘夫别妻。 | Villages cried out, north and south. Sons left parents, husbands left wives. |
| 皆云前后征蛮者，千万人行无一回。 | People said that of the countless men sent against the frontier peoples, none returned. |
| 是时翁年二十四，兵部牒中有名字。 | I was twenty-four then. My name was on the military rolls. |
| 夜深不敢使人知，偷将大石捶折臂。 | Late at night, in secret, I broke my own arm with a stone. |
| 张弓簸旗俱不堪，从兹始免征云南。 | I could neither draw a bow nor wave a banner. Only then was I excused from going to Yunnan. |
| 骨碎筋伤非不苦，且图拣退归乡土。 | The damage hurt. What I wanted was to be sent home. |
| 此臂折来六十年，一肢虽废一身全。 | The arm has been broken for sixty years. One limb was lost to use, but his life was spared. |
| 至今风雨阴寒夜，直到天明痛不眠。 | On cold nights of wind and rain the pain still keeps him awake until dawn. |
| 痛不眠，终不悔，且喜老身今独在。 | In pain and sleepless, I have no regret. I am glad to have lived to old age. |
| 不然当时泸水头，身死魂孤骨不收。 | Otherwise I might have died by the Lu River, my spirit alone, my bones uncollected. |
| 应作云南望乡鬼，万人冢上哭呦呦。 | I would be a ghost in Yunnan looking toward home, crying over a mass grave. |
| 老人言，君听取。 | Listen to what the old man says. |
| 君不闻、开元宰相宋开府，不赏边功防黩武。 | Have you heard of the Kaiyuan minister Lord Song? He withheld rewards for frontier exploits to curb reckless warfare. |
| 又不闻、天宝宰相杨国忠，欲求恩幸立边功。 | And of the Tianbao minister Yang Guozhong (杨国忠, Yáng Guózhōng)? He sought the ruler’s favour through frontier exploits. |
| 边功未立生人怨，请问新丰折臂翁。 | Before any such glory was won, resentment rose among the living. Ask the old man of Xinfeng with the broken arm. |
Why the Poem Begins with the Old Man’s Arm
The narrator describes both arms before the man speaks. One can rest on a descendant’s shoulder. The other carries the result of an old decision. The descendant shows what “one limb disabled, one life whole” has come to mean in the years after the levy. The man has reached an age and a place where someone from a much younger generation can walk beside him.[1]
The injury still hurts when the weather turns cold. That detail keeps survival from looking like an easy bargain. His refusal to regret the choice is measured against the death he imagines far from home. The poem gives him a reason to be grateful for his age and a reason to remember the levy every time the pain returns.[1]
What the Road to Yunnan Means to the Recruits
The man first hears the danger through other voices. People tell of the river, the deadly passage and troops who never return. The poem marks this material as something heard, and the villagers’ farewells make the danger real to those who expect to be taken. The numbers in their account convey dread. They cannot establish the mortality rate of a particular expedition.[1]
The historical background is the struggle between the Tang and the southwestern state of Nanzhao. A dynastic chronicle records a Tang defeat in 751 and coercive recruitment for a renewed campaign. That helps explain the levy behind the poem. The chronicle gives the episode a setting. It does not identify the poem’s speaker.[1][2]
How the Last Lines Judge the Court
The closing address contrasts Song Jing (宋璟, Sòng Jǐng) with Yang Guozhong. The poem presents one minister as holding back rewards for border victories and the other as seeking favour by pursuing them. It asks the reader to judge the second policy through the experience of a man expected to bear its risk.[1]
This is one of Bai’s New Yuefu (新乐府, Xīn Yuèfǔ) poems. As in The Charcoal Seller, a large public practice is made legible through its effect on an individual’s body and work. Du Fu’s Three Officials also puts readers close to recruitment, in a different wartime setting. His Three Partings gives the separations their own voices.[1][3]
FAQs About The Elderly Man of Xinfeng
How old was the man when he was called up?
The poem gives his age as twenty-four at the levy and eighty-eight at the encounter. In his speech, “sixty years” is a rounded account of how long the injury has lasted.[1]
Is the poem in the same series as The Charcoal Seller?
Yes. Both are part of Bai Juyi’s New Yuefu. This poem targets the pursuit of frontier achievements, while The Charcoal Seller shows the harm caused by forced palace procurement.[1][3]
Sources
[1] Bai Juyi. The Elderly Man of Xinfeng in the Complete Tang Poems
[2] Sima Guang. Zizhi Tongjian, Volume 216
[3] Bai Juyi. The Elderly Man of Xinfeng in New Yuefu