红梅 The Plum Blossom

红梅

原作: 苏轼（字子瞻, 号东坡居士; 11世纪北宋）

新版及赏析: 闵晓红(2023)

怕愁贪睡独开迟，

自恐冰容不入时。

故作小红桃杏色，

尚余孤瘦雪霜姿。

寒心未肯随春态，

酒晕无端上玉肌。

诗老不知梅格在，

更看绿叶与青枝。

The Plum Blossom

Chinese original: Su Shi

English version: Julia Min ( 2023)

Timorous, a late riser, she blooms alone in snow,

fearing her icy look belies the style she knows.

So she paints a peach-apricot hue, velvet-soft,

on her slender boughs, braving snow and frost.

Her shy pride in cold veins isn’t for spring crowds.

Yet, what drink turns her pearl-pale face to pink?

The old poet knows not her grace profound — 

Her black boughs need no green to stand proud.

Notes:

The old poet: referring to Shi Manqing（石曼卿）who wrote the verses – Let it (the plum tree) be a peach tree though it bears no green leaves; let it be an apricot tree, but its branches are black.”(“认桃无绿叶，辨杏有青枝”). Su Shi mocks Manqing’s understanding here.

Appreciation:

Su Shi painted what he loved. In his exile years at Huangzhou — cold, isolated, far from court — he painted bamboo, rugged stones, and always, the plum. She appears in his art not as decoration, but as a mirror: knotted branches, solitary blossoms, a spirit that endures without breaking.

But here, the plum is not the bold first messenger of spring that poets usually celebrate. She is the last to bloom — hesitant, unsure, painting herself peach-pink as if to apologise for being out of fashion. We almost miss her, there among the frost.

And then we look closer.

Beneath that soft blush lies something unshakeable: "her shy pride in her cold veins." (玉骨冰心literal meaning: jade bones, icy heart.) A strength that needs no green leaves to prove itself. A spirit that stands alone, and stands enough.

My English version tries not to translate those words but to trace that journey — from self-doubt to quiet pride. The plum here is not a symbol. She is a presence. Timid at first, then still. Then proud. By the final line, she needs nothing from us. It is an act of listening — across centuries, across cultures — and finding that the same flower still blooms.

Reference:

1. Blooming Alone in Winter by Gordon Osing, Julia Min, and Huang Haipeng， published by the People's Publication House Henan Province in 1990 (《寒心未肯随春态》戈登. 奥赛茵，闵晓红，黄海鹏) “The Plum Tree” -- Timorous, a late sleeper, she blooms alone in winter,/Fearing, too, her icy look’s not the style of the season./So she sets out to make herself up like apricot petals,/On branches haggard from toughing the frosts and snow./Her heart’s cold doesn’t go with the fashions of spring./What does she drink that turns pure jade skin so happy a pink?/The old poet couldn’t change you to peach by any wish;/You can’t change a black bough or a leaf from what it deeply is. ”)

2. Baike.baidu.com (百度百科)

2. Picture from 博宝艺术网