Physical Interpretation of Classical Chinese Poetry (1) – Xiangyi Daozhong

Xiangyi Road Middle

Song Chen and Yi

Flying flowers on both sides of the river shine red, and the wind of the Hundred Mile Elm Causeway is half a day.

Lying down and watching the clouds not move, I don't know that the clouds are east of me.

Appreciation: In the early summer, the poet set off from Kaifeng to Xiangyi to go to His post, and traveled east along the Huiji River by boat. The weather is clear, the fields on both sides of the river are colorful, flying with the wind, reflecting the spring water of the river red, and even the sails seem to be dyed with a faint red. Along the embankment covered with elm trees, half a day's work will reach a place hundreds of miles away. Lying on the boat and looking at the sky full of white clouds, they all seemed to be motionless, but they didn't know that the clouds and I were both heading east.

Physical interpretation: This is because the sunlight is a composite light containing red orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple colors, shining on the red flowers on both sides of the strait, and the red flowers only reflect red light, while absorbing other color light, the red flowers look red. The red light reflected by the safflower shines on the hull of the ship and then reflects it to the human eye, so the hull also looks faintly red. All the way downwind, along the embankment full of elm trees, half a day's work to reach a hundred miles away, which seems to be able to calculate the speed of the sailboat under the wind: s = 100 miles = 50 kilometers, t = half a day = 6 hours, v = s / t = 50km / 6h = 8km / h, this speed is slightly larger than the normal walking speed of people, equivalent to jogging. This is because the Huiji River is flowing eastward, the boat is going down the river, and the wind is also blowing to the east, which is really a smooth wind. Flying flowers on both sides of the strait, full of elm trees, a light sail, a hundred miles downwind, the poet went to his post on this long trip, how relaxed and cheerful, the heart is relaxed! The poet lies still in the cabin, looking up at the blue sky and white clouds. Oh, how come the clouds are fixed there and don't move? In an instant, the poet suddenly realized: It turned out that the white clouds were silently walking with me, flying east with me! The clouds in the sky and the sails on the small boats were originally moving forward with the wind. In this way, the poet in the cabin saw that the white cloud was still in the air, but if you think about it carefully: the ship traveled a hundred miles, and the white cloud was always overhead, which showed that it was not stationary, but was moving forward like the sailboat he was riding on. That is to say: with the cabin as a reference, the white cloud is stationary; with the river embankment as the reference, the white cloud is moving. Although the poet does not know the relativity of movement, he uses his most intuitive experience to interpret the "relativity of motion" clearly.