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��117. ON HIS WHITE HAIR
On the face of the bright mirror, I wonder, Whence has come this hoar frost of autumn! Ah, my long, long white hair of three thousand chang, Grown so long with the cares of this world!
���Chang is a Chinese unit of measure equal, perhaps, to ten feet. White hair 80,000 feet is certainly long. But this is not ludicrous to Chinese taste, for it is not a foolish extravagance but an innocent form of poetic in- dulgence.
In Chinese literature figures such as one thousand, three thousands, and ten thousands, simply denote a large number. So we read constantly of a party of ten thousand guests, a waterfall three thousand feet high, and a man emptying one thousand jugfuls of wine. [166]
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