Here is some verse for you, by Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Jiuling.Here, south of the Yangzi, grows a red orange tree.Listen to it in Mandarin here, read by David Barnes.
All winter long its leaves are green,
Not because of a warmer soil,
But because its nature is used to the cold.
Though it might serve your honorable guests,
You leave it here, far below mountain and river.
Circumstance governs destiny.
Cause and effect are an infinite cycle.
You plant your peach trees and your plums,
You forget the shade from this other tree
Find other poems by Zhang Jiuling and the Tang poets in the Tang Shi San Bai Shou here.
Listen to some of them in Mandarin and Hokkien here (and look up the Chinese translations of the English titles here, so you can locate them on the audio page).
