This Ancient Chinese Poem is a Machine | Tales From the Bottle
This 1,600-year-old poem has never been replicated in English, because it would be virtually impossible.
“The Star Gauge (Chinese: 璇璣圖; pinyin: xuán jī tú), or translated as “the armillary sphere chart”, is the posthumous title given to a 4th-century Chinese poem written by the Sixteen Kingdoms poet Su Hui for her husband. It consists of a 29 by 29 grid of characters, forming a reversible poem that can be read in different ways to form roughly 3,000 smaller rhyming poems. The outer border forms a single circular poem, thought to be both the first and the longest of its kind.
The Star Gauge consists of 841 characters in a grid. The original was described by contemporary sources as shuttle-woven on brocade. It was composed by Su Hui during a time when East Asian Mādhyamaka was one of the predominant philosophical schools in the area.
The outer border is meant to be read in a circle. The grid is known as a palindrome poem, and can be read in different ways to generate over 3,000 shorter poems, in which the second line of every couplet rhymes with that of the next. The largest set of such poems are 2,848 four-liners with seven characters per line. In the image below, the maroon grid is made up of 32 seven-character phrases. These may be read in certain patterns around the perimeter, and in other patterns for the internal grid. Other poems can be formed by reading characters from the other colored sections.”
More on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Gauge
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@Qxir
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
A follower is implementing an interactive crowd-sourced translation for the Star Gauge, which can be found here!: https://stargauge.fiple.dev/
One thing I'm a little unsure of is how the poem supposedly mentions the Tang Dynasty, which would not have come about for another several hundred years. Perhaps this is just a questionable translation? My source for that is here :https://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz17/essays/5-zhao-zati-poetry.html
I would be interested in hearing an explanation/correction for this.
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@SpellboundWolf
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
It sounds like her heart was broken. She crafted this because she was so incredibly hurt that her beloved threw everything they had away. I hope their love endured and became stronger when he came back to her.
@thresholdhatesrevenant2620
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
"Its like poetry. It rhymes" – George Lucas
@cremetangerine82-p9q
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
7:38 – Virgin Henry Lok versus Chad Su Hui
@埊
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
诗者，心之始也。
@G.O.D.C.E.A.R
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
Poem of a machine song – mili
@_RedRightHand_
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
Hey, I talked about this one during a presentation about palindrome poetry for literature class.
@lorddrayvon1426
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
My head-cannon is that this is deliberately pretentious nonsense that’s a 1600 year old way of trolling people who attempt to find meaning in it
@ahuhahuhahuh0
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
She made about four patterns at best and the rest is extrapolated from Chinese being batshit insane.
@bkeith269
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
I still feel like she's just being passive aggressive…
@sylumgand
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
What I picked up in this video is if one word can mean 15 different things based on where it is in a line of words, its gibberish. You could interpret the Lord of the Rings novels as the old testement if you're allotted a rainbow of meanings for every word.
@cthulholmhastur5317
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
🤔 I say, there's a bit of pareidolia going on with some of these researchers. 🧐
@thomasmills3934
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
So why cant they put that kind of effort when they make all the junk they ship over here…
@thomasmills3934
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
Man those poems were just as bad as everything else made in China..
@babde_heyyy
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
You should make a video about the blind traveling poet Asik Veysel
@Creativity_log
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
It's a good thing this is basically impossible in english, God knows what they would have done with a lady who did THIS
@BarelyCynical
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
This was made by an autistic savant who did Sudoku while listening to emo
@Ggdivhjkjl
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
Try reading The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den.
@ryotanada
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
2:05 By the way, the character for "heart" in dead center fits so well, or dare I say, poetic?
@nerdy0n3
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
9:05 Yes, but we all know that the worst poet ever was Nancy Millstone Jennings.
@SlayerEndX13
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
Asian Difficulty Poetry goes insanely hard.
@ArmyNavyAcademy
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
This reminds me of the Bible Code
@03-blackbird
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
5:03 yeah uhhhhhh… these don’t rhyme lmfao
@radical-randy7
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
My dumb ass thought it was going to be an actual machine, like some ancient mechanical shit. Wow
@cheesytiann
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
yearner final boss
@pflh2391
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
Imagine the sorrowmaxxing su hui had to be in to make a literaturegoon as complicated as this
@Aengus42
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
Up your's too, mate! 🤣
@Nilguiri
July 3, 2026 at 4:28 am
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