Chinese Literature Podcast

This week looks a poem by Mao Zedong celebrating the communist defeat of a tiny parasite. "Shooing Away the God of Epidemics" was written in 1956 upon Mao hearing that a county in Jiangxi had eliminated all their blood flukes.  #1 China’s green waters and the blue mountains are so numerous but even the great ancient Chinese medical theorist Hua Tou is unable to take care of this little worm, The thousand villages are covered in vines and peppered with their leaking shit, the ten thousand homes are abandoned, only ghosts sing inside them.  He sits on the Earth everyday and walks 80,000 miles, He roams through the heavens and looks out the distance at the thousand rivers. China’s Orion constellation desires to ask the God of Epidemics about it, happiness and hopelessness are all the same as time goes by.   其一 绿水青山枉自11多，华佗2无奈小虫何！ 千村薜荔3人遗矢12，万户萧疏13鬼唱歌。 坐地日行八万里，巡天14遥看一千河。 牛郎4欲问瘟神事，一样悲欢15逐逝波5。 #2 A spring wind blows through a billion poplar and willow branches, the 600 million Chinese of today live like the sa