Note that this poem isn't in any "real" Chinese language. Basically, it's written in Classical Chinese, but pronounced as if it were Mandarin. Old Chinese (the

Note that this poem isn't in any "real" Chinese language. Basically, it's written in Classical Chinese, but pronounced as if it were Mandarin. Old Chinese (the spoken language on which the written Classical form was based) had a much more complex phonology, which was simplified in Mandarin, resulting in many Old Chinese words becoming homophones or near homophones. To reduce the ambiguity, Mandarin uses many more compound words than Classical Chinese. For example, a poet is called shīrén in Mandarin (literally, "poet person") while this poem just uses shī.