Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Question 1134: She sells seashells on the sea shore

The following is an English translation of a Chinese poem called the Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den, and was written by Yuen Ren Chao.

In a stone den was a poet called Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.

What is unusual about this poem?


Answer: The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den consists of 92 characters, all with the sound "shi" in different tones when read in Mandarin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den

7 Answers:

And-E said...

Tongue Twister. The poem in Mandarin, results in a lot of homophones, which also becomes incomprehensible in certain forms of the language.

And-E said...

Also, it has only one syllable. But various pronounciations.

Anonymous said...

it only has the words "shi" and its different pronounciations in the Chinese version
- Sukanto

Kapinjal Chowdhury said...

TONGUE TWISTER POEM.

prashanth said...

the poem has 92 characters, all with the sound "shi" in different tones in chinese language...

wheelsandwings said...

It consists of 92 characters, all with the sound shi in different tones when read in Mandarin

Siddarth Pai said...

Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

all written using the word shi