After Meryl Streep recites poem in Chinese on US TV, four celebrities who are fluent in the language and two Trump grandkids who are learning
- Streep learned a famous Tang dynasty poem in 2011, intending to recite it on stage in China accompanied by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, but got cold feet and used English
- Nine years on, Stephen Colbert challenged her to recite it, and the Chinese internet lit up. But there are other celebrities who are fluent in Chinese
Chinese social media went into a frenzy recently when Hollywood actress Meryl Streep recited a famous Tang dynasty poem on a US talk show – in Chinese.
On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert earlier this month, the host asked the award-winning actress whether she remembered an incident – cited by former US president Barack Obama briefly in his new book The Promised Land – in which she spoke Chinese to him.
Streep recalled that she learned the four-line poem while on a trip to the Chinese capital, Beijing, in 2011, but was so terrified she would get the Chinese wrong, she got cold feet and couldn’t say it on stage.
“I went with [cellist] Yo-Yo Ma to Beijing for a cultural exchange concert in the Bird’s Nest stadium. I was going to [recite] it first in English, then in Chinese, as Yo-Yo weaves his music in between. We practised it [in Chinese], but in the end, I chickened out,” she said.
The poem, called The Deer Range, by Wang Wei, is about the poet’s appreciation for nature’s tranquillity. Colbert asked her to recite the poem in Chinese on the spot – and she did. Although the actress did not get the tones of some of the characters right, internet users in China were impressed that she could so vividly remember the poem after nine years.