“White hair three thousand zhang” White hair three thousand zhang

White hair three thousand zhang bái fà sān qiān zhàng
White hair, three thousand zhang
Because of sorrow, it is as long as this yuán chóu sì gè cháng
It is as long as this because of sorrow
I do not know, in the bright mirror bù zhī míng jìng lǐ
I do not know, within the bright mirror
Where did I get this autumn frost hé chù dé qiū shuāng
Where did I obtain this autumn frost

This is the 15th poem in a series of 17 titled “Qiupu Ge” (Songs of Qiupu), composed by Li Bai in his later years in Qiupu, Jiangnan (Guichi County, Anhui Province).

Since one zhang in the Tang Dynasty was about 3.1 meters, “three thousand zhang” is over 9,000 meters. While it is naturally an exaggerated figure, it does not feel unnatural as a line lamenting and pitying the state of an old, broken man who has reached old age without realizing the great ambitions he held in his youth. “si ge” translated as “as this,” is a colloquialism from the Tang Dynasty. It is the same as “ru ci”. “Autumn frost” means “autumn frost,” but because frost is white, it is a metaphor for “white hair.” It is said that this is the first time it was used in this way in Li Bai's poetry.

When looking up “white hair three thousand zhang” in the Kojien (7th edition), after the literal interpretation of “hair turning white and growing wild due to years of sorrow,” it states, “A description of worries and sorrows accumulating. Also considered an example of an exaggerated expression.”

For the “exaggerated expression” side, examples immediately come to mind, such as “His stories are always ‘white hair three thousand zhang,’ so you should take them with a grain of salt” or “What is written here is so exaggerated, it’s like ‘white hair three thousand zhang’.” For the other meaning of “worries and sorrows,” I tried forcing some examples like “I have ‘white hair three thousand zhang’ from all the worry” or “Since losing her beloved husband, she has been spending her days with ‘white hair three thousand zhang’ thoughts,” but they just don't feel right. Even without using an exaggerated expression like “white hair three thousand zhang,” it is sufficient to just say “my hair has turned white” or “I have more gray hair,” and there are other idiomatic expressions like “I feel like I’m wasting away” or “I feel like I’m not even alive.”

It seems better to view it as being used exclusively in Japanese when exaggerating quantity or size, and rarely used when referring to the depth of worry or sorrow.

When I tried translating the above “His stories are always ‘white hair three thousand zhang,’ so you should take them with a grain of salt” as “His words are ‘white hair three thousand zhang,’ which is hard to believe” and showed it to a Chinese friend, they corrected it to “His words are too exaggerated, which is hard to believe” and said that if I really wanted to use “white hair three thousand zhang”, I could change the latter part “hard to believe” to something like “it is simply ‘white hair three thousand zhang’” and it might be understood. The fact that they said “it might be understood” was likely just to save my face, and it is probably still unnatural.

Since Li Bai's “Qiupu Ge” is something everyone learns in elementary school in China, even children know that “white hair three thousand zhang” is an exaggerated expression. However, while they know it, it does not seem to be used as a proverb or idiomatic expression as often as it is in Japanese.

Even when looking it up in the most popular national language dictionary, “Xiandai Hanyu Cidian”, one cannot find “white hair three thousand zhang”, let alone “white hair”. Admittedly, it seems there are cases where “white hair three thousand zhang” is shortened to four characters as “white hair thousand zhang” and used as an idiom, and it is included in large dictionaries, citing Li Bai's “Qiupu Ge” as the source, but no usage examples are provided.