This was my 2018 year end translation project. The text is a classic, and it seems appropriate for the first day of the new year. Bai Yu did a reading of this for 榜樣閱讀 (Example Reading), and I'll put together an abridged version of just the part he read and post it to the group later, but here's the whole thing.

Chinese character count: 3721
English translation word count: 3193 words

Full Chinese text link

如果你是从nodezero微博推荐来的，我的微博用戶名就是foxghost狐鬼，英文问题或者评论可以发私信。(I may write back in English 因为我打字很慢。。。)

I like being alive; life is like this, so brimming with delight.

I like the sunshine in winter, the way it unfolds in the hazy fog of dawn. I like that portion of mild and distant serenity; I like that light and heat given without clamour. Come noon, the playground is full of people leisurely sitting, sunning; that primal and genuine imagery always manages to profoundly touch my heart.

I like to tread narrow mountain footpaths in the spring breeze, with strawberries solicitously, diligently blooming and clustering with fruit like red lanterns all along the way. I like raising my head to see the sharp points of young buds on the tree tops; the youngest and most tender yellow green blushing with a hint of innocent pink, as if preparing to offer something, to present something. That poise so weak and yet overflowing with life would often teach me some of the most beautiful truths in its wordlessness.

This is because while there is a modern distinction between 綠 green and 藍 blue, in the past we had 青 / qing for ‘nature’s colour’. In any old text (and old words still used) it could mean, depending on context:

1. blue
2. youthful / young
3. pale yellow.
   
4. green / verdant
5. the band of colour just above blue in the rainbow (紅橙黃綠青藍紫, which puts 青 in between green and blue）if you’re a kid but when you get to form 1, you get that the rainbow is actually 紅橙黃綠藍靛紫, so the blue-green we thought was blue green is now blue.
   
6. The blue of blue white porcelain (青花瓷）
   
7. clear sky blue - 青天.
8. indigo blue (青出於藍而勝於藍 / qing comes out of the indigo plant and yet it is more vibrant than indigo)
9. black.

Also, 青衫 may read “green clothes,” but together and describing historical / mythical figures it just means “scholar’s robes,” where the word 青 means ‘young’ and the robes could be any colour. It describes the style, not the colour.

A line from Peach Blossom Debt:
青衫公子站起身，本仙君驚且喜，恍若東風拂過，三千桃樹，花開爛漫。
The young noble clad in scholar’s robes stands, and this immortal one is pleasantly surprised, as though the east wind chanced by and every brilliant flower on three thousand peach trees blossom.

So, a very important question — what colour are Kunlun’s robes? Chapter 68: