As in English, and to an even greater degree, a word in Chinese does not always have one clear-cut, fixed meaning, but often covers different meanings, some of which may be mutually exclusive. Take a simple example: sheng; this word, used as a verb, could mean: to live, to give birth to, to be born; as a noun: life, young man, student; as an adjective: alive, raw, strange, innate, natural, lively. The embarras de choix presented by such words in Chinese has been demonstrated by Professor I. A. Richards in his Mencius on the Mind, and may become a source of constant obscurity. While this may be a serious drawback in expository prose, it can be an advantage in poetry, for it makes possible the expression of thought and emotion with the greatest economy of words. The poet can compress several meanings into one word, and the reader has to choose the meaning that seems most likely to be uppermost in the poet’s mind, as well as probable subsidiary meanings, while excluding irrelevant meanings of which the word is capable in other contexts. This of course also happens in English, but not, I believe, to the same extent as in Chinese. In this respect, Chinese is a better language for writing poetry. Comparing the language of poetry with that of prose, Professor William Empson remarked, ‘The demands of metre allow the poet to say something which is not normal colloquial 9English, so that the reader thinks of the various colloquial forms which are near to it, and puts them together; weighing their probabilities in proportion to their nearness. It is for such reasons as this that poetry can be more compact, while seeming to be less precise, than prose.’¹ We may add that it is for similar reasons that Chinese can be more compact, while seeming to be less precise, than English.