Talk:Crow Terrace Poetry Trial

Article name

It seems that this incident is more commonly referred to in English as the "Crow Terrace Poetry Case". This is especially true for materials published before this Wikipedia article was created in 2014. I couldn't find any hits for "Crow Terrace Poetry Trial" in the 20th century. Retinalsummer (talk) 19:09, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, neither "Crow Terrace Poetry Case" nor "Crow Terrace Poetry "Crow Terrace Poetry Trial" are common topics in English language literature, including online. That's why it's nice to have a Wikipedia article! "烏臺詩案" is the general term in Chinese, and translates as "case", "trial", and so on, so either name would work (with a redirect to the other name). The naming of the article is best reflected by the following English language source:

• Murck, Alfreda (2000). Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent. Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard-Yenching Institute. ISBN 0-674-00782-4.

Since reference citations are more important for an encyclopedia than are the number of hits from internet searches, going with the publication from the Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard-Yenching Institute is the best way to go here, unless there are other relevant academic references. Cheers, Dcattell (talk) 23:24, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

I was talking about hits on google books to academic sources. Charles Hartman has written about this incident, and calls it a "case" (see 'Poetry and Politics in 1079: The Crow Terrace Poetry Case of Su Shih'. Chinese Literature, Essays, Articles, Reviews 12 (1990): 15-44). The Cambridge History of China also uses "Crow Terrace Poetry Case", which is a pretty authoritative source. Retinalsummer (talk) 00:05, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Use of Dongpo and other issues

My edits were reverted by @Dcattell for I think faulty reasons. There is no need to keep on mentioning the name "Dongpo", especially in the awkward way done in the article. Su Shi may be commonly called "Dongpo" in Chinese, but he is almost always referred to as Su Shi in English. All the mentions of "Dongpo" I deleted were irrelevant to the article content. This article is about a specific incident, and the only point the name "Dongpo" is relevant is the bit that says where he got the name from, which I did not delete. Also, Dcattell reverted my edit that removed a superfluous link the Chinese language article. If you look on the left hand side of the page, you'll see the word "中文". That is the link to the Chinese language version of this article. It is not standard at all to put links to different language versions of a wikipedia page at the bottom. They go on the left hand side. I am going to make the edit again. Please do not revert it. Retinalsummer (talk) 00:12, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

@User:Retinalsummer, thank you for your interest in editing "Crow Terrace Poetry Trial", and I do not wish to discourage your editing, especially because you seem very reasonable and to have a pretty good idea of what you are doing. And, I don't think most of any controversy over either the use of Dongpo versus Su Shi or whether or not to link to Chinese Wikipedia article on the Crow Terrace Poetry Trial (in Chinese) is that big of a deal. I agree with some of what you have said, but also do respectfully disagree with some of your reasoning. It is true, as you say, that it is not standard to have intrawiki links (except to Wikisource) in articles on Chinese poetry (and probably also not generally in historical-political articles -- and this article does occupy a somewhat curious intersection of the two). There may be various reasons for this lack of intrawiki article links: one is that in many or most cases the en.wikipedia article is better than the zh.wikipedia article and/or some or all of the useful parts of the zh version have been incorporated into the en version. However, it is standard to have links in all sorts of articles to more information available elsewhere, that is, externally to the article itself. In this particular case, it seemed that it might be worth calling attention toward looking at the intrawiki article for more information; but, you are right that it is easy enough to get to. So, I agree with you that it is not necessary to have this link in a section of this article: but, just because something is not strictly necessary, this does this not necessarily mean it should be deleted. Another thing, is that these articles tend to be the way they are is mostly because they happened to turn out that way, not because of some sort of prescient Wikipedia rules; although, over time, there has been a tendency towards a more similar article style and towards developing guideline suggestions for certain genres of articles. However, as far as Su Shi being far more common than Dongpo in English, I think that you are quite probably mistaken. For what it is worth, English speakers whom I have known have have almost invariably used "Dongpo" (also spelt "Dong Po") or somewhat less "Su Dongpo" (or "Su Dong Po") as his name. However personal experience in reading or speech is merely anecdotal, and I am sure that your experience is different. Perhaps we have moved in different circles or read different textual material. I take you at your word that you are very much more familiar with hearing or reading the name Su Shi rather than Dongpo. However, Dongpo is quite common in English, often in the context of poetry. Indeed, for better or worse, one of or perhaps the most common reference to Su Shi/Dongpo in English is to the eponymous dish Dongpo pork, as can be verified by hits from an internet search for Dongpo. There are also quite a few published restaurant menus similarly mentioning this famous dish, named after Dongpo. In fact, I have never seen a listing for "Su Shi Pork" on a menu. (I suppose it might be a bit confusing, no?) Anyway, given that this is a somewhat academically-oriented article, I agree with you that it is better to prefer Su Shi to Dongpo here, but not based on a popularity contest for one name over the other. So much for minor disagreements, and I am not planning to revert your choices for this article. However, if you want to change the title of the "Dongpo pork" article to "Su Shi pork", I am not the only one who will strongly disagree. Dcattell (talk) 13:31, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

PS If you prefer to move the article to "Crow Terrace Poetry Case", please feel free to do so; unless, in the unlikely case that anyone objects. Dcattell (talk) 13:47, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

I would also not want to change Dongpo pork to "Su Shi pork", so we are in agreement on that. Retinalsummer (talk) 17:26, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Also, since you like Hartman, it is interesting to note that Hartman says: "A collection of documents known today as the Tung-p'o wu-t'ai shih-an...([Su] Tung-p'o's Crow Terrace Poetry Case) seems to derive in a rather direct manner from the actual Sung dynasty Censorate dossier that was compiled during the course of events....As such, most scholars consider this text as primary source material for the biography of Su Shih." So, we have a primary source that uses Dongpo, but Charles Hartman after noting this uses Su Shi. Just in case this is of relevant interest. Dcattell (talk) 19:29, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

The primary source is in Chinese so it uses Dongpo and Hartman is writing in English so he uses Su Shi. Retinalsummer (talk) 02:22, 17 January 2023 (UTC)