Chinese Literature

What is that flashing beyond the wall? A flying charger bright?

Ah no, for when I look more close, Tis only two glowworms’ light.

The poem contains many beautiful lines like these, which illustrate the splendid realism of popular art. The language of Ashma is simple, beautiful and graphic. The poem

depicts vividly the simplicity of the working people, their blameless love,

their goodness and their indomitable courage. As a Chinese poet has said, Ashma is like a garden filled with all the bright colours and pungent odours of life; and these are rare and admirable qualities.

Originally Ashma, in spite of its popularity with the Shani people, possessed no written text. In 1958, however, literary workers in Yunnan Province sent a group to Kueishan District to take down all existing yersions of this poem and to compile a standard text to be translated into Chinese. These literary workers mixed freely with the Shani people, living and working with them until they were able to share their thoughts and understand their customs and cultural tradition. After its translation into Chinese, Ashma was published first in the magazine Southwest Literature and then in People’s Literature, where its appearance aroused widespread enthusiasm among both ordinary readers and writers, who hail this as yet another achievement in the discovery and editing of the fraternal peoples’ literature. China possesses a rich, multi-national literature; and today, even as we develop creative writing, we are making every effort to discover and edit folk-songs, stories and ballads which will enrich our literature still further.

185