燒餅歌 The Song of the Shaobing

 燒餅歌 The Song of the Shaobing 

In this post i will offer the first English translation (to my knowledge) translate what has become a somewhat notorious prophetic text: The Song of the Shaobing, sometimes translated as "the burnt biscuit poem"

The text is a dialogue between the first Ming Emperor- Taizu 明太祖 (Hongwu Emperor 洪武, reigned 1368 to 1398) and Liu Bowen 劉伯溫, a famous Chinese sage.The Emperor asks Liu Bowen to deliver him a prophesy of the future of his dynasty, and indeed of China as a whole. What follows is a set of apparently cryptic poems that predict future political events and the names of the personages involved.

Although apparently cryptic, the editions of the poem have glosses that decypher the names of the personages involved. Much of the encoding is done through breaking apart Chinese characters. For example, the surname Wei 魏 can be decomposed into the words 八千女鬼- "8000 lady ghosts"- which is how a man surnamed Wei is named in the poem. Some of these decompositions are fairly obvious, but others are not. As large sections of the poem are written in this manner, it is unsurprising that no complete translation has been made so far.

Much of the poem is dedicated to events of the Qing dynasty- the successor to the Ming. Much is made of the fact that the Qing were Manchus- and thus Barbarians from a Han Chinese perspective. In any case the poem predicts, that with the fall of the Qing, disasters of positively apocalyptic proportions would occur; however at the end of them a new ruler would come to rule china, and usher in an era of peace.

***

Something must be said about The origins of the Song of the Shaobing itself. To my knowledge, the earliest dated printed text is actually rather late - the 27th year of the Republic, or 1938. published in a compendium called 中國二千年之預言  "Seven Chinese prophesies for Two thousand years"   https://books.google.com/books?id=dPokAAAAMAAJ&dq=%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E9%A0%90%E8%A8%80&pg=PP101#v=onepage&q&f=false 

The collection is prefaced by the following note as a sort of certificate of authenticity: [it is also translated into chinese on the facing page]

"In 1859, when the allied English and French troops burnt the Yuan Ming Yuan in Peking, one of the soldiers discovered a box of manuscripts written in Chinese which had been carefully preserved by the Imperial Family. Seeing that they contain pictures, the soldier presented them to Miss Lypia from whom I secured the same. 

In translating them I found that they represented the predictions of a chinese prophet and reference the rise, the fall the tranquility and the turbulence of China. The emperor of the past dynasties prohibited their publication, for they might disturb the minds of the people- and lead to bad consequences

It is indeed our good fortune that they had came into our country and that we may study them. These lines are written as an inroduction

- Maeon (1867)"

I am convinced that this note- and indeed, all the texts in the book are relatively recent forgeries, dating from the late years of the Qing.  However in my opinion that is unproductive, especially when you consider the context.

 Starting in 1849, China was enduring a "Century of humiliation" where, amongst other things the Forbidden City was sacked by foreign troops. The much detested Qing dynasty fell in 1912-- ending the 3000 odd years of imperial rule. As the text was published, China was in the process of a civil war. Given this context, the fall of the barbarian Qing- foretold in the last golden age of China- would seem comforting; the apocalyptic pronouncements of the final part might have seemed plausible, and the arrival of the sage ruler positively intoxicating. Indeed, the note stating that the texts came from a sacked imperial  palace only adds to to the text's authority:With the collapse of the Imperial system, the people of China can now access- and hence control- their own destiny. 

I understand Modern commentaries of the text still exist, but I have yet the time to read them. If I do come round to doing so, I will add their comments to this translation.