POEM
登鹳雀楼Dēng Guàn Què LóuOn the Stork Tower
- Dynasty
- Tang
- Author
- 王之涣 Wáng Zhīhuàn (Wang Zhihuan)
- Genre
- 五言绝句
- Lines
- 4
- Era
- c. 8th century
THE POEM — LINE BY LINE
Tap a line for word-by-word gloss.
#1白日依山尽Bái rì yī shān jìnThe white sun sinks behind the mountains.word by word
#2黄河入海流Huáng hé rù hǎi liúThe Yellow River flows toward the sea.word by word
#3欲穷千里目Yù qióng qiān lǐ mùIf you want to see for a thousand miles,word by word
#4更上一层楼Gèng shàng yī céng lóuthen climb one more storey of the tower.word by word
POEM IN PLAIN ENGLISH
A plain-English guide, not a literary translationThe white sun sinks behind the mountains, and the Yellow River rolls east toward the sea. If you want your eyes to reach a thousand miles into the distance, then climb one storey higher. The last two lines are among the most quoted in Chinese: seeing far takes standing high. They read at once as travel advice and as a proverb about ambition — 更上一层楼 ("go up one more storey") is still everyday Chinese for "aim higher." This is a plain-English guide, not a literary translation.
BACKGROUND & IMAGERY
Wang Zhihuan (688-742) was a Tang poet known for frontier and landscape pieces; only a handful of his poems survive. The Stork Tower stood on the bank of the Yellow River in what is now Shanxi province, a famous lookout of its day. The poem turns a simple act — climbing one more floor — into the classic Chinese statement of the "ascent" motif: the higher you stand, the farther you see.
TRUST & SOURCES
- Reviewed by
- AI-assisted editorial review
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-15
Sources
- 《唐诗三百首》通行本（中华书局点校本）
- 本站飞花令语料 feihualing.db（poem 279580） — 文本以通行本为准，库本仅行级参考（库本与通行本一致）
- Original English paraphrase & gloss — 本站原创学习释义，非文学译本（plain-English guide, not a literary translation）
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