Mo Yu Er · The Wild Goose Mound: Yuan Haowen’s Eight-Century Question of Love

問世間，情是何物， 直教生死相許？

What is love,

that it should bind life and death together?

More than eight centuries after Yuan Haowen wrote this question,

it remains unanswered.

The story behind Mo Yu Er · The Wild Goose Mound begins not with two human lovers,

but with two wild geese.

In 1205,

during the Jin dynasty,

the young Yuan Haowen was travelling toward Bingzhou for the civil examinations when he encountered a wild-goose hunter.

The hunter had captured and killed one goose.

Its companion escaped the net.

But instead of flying away,

it continued circling above,

crying,

until it finally threw itself to the ground and died.

Yuan Haowen bought the two birds.

He buried them together beside the Fen River.

He piled stones over the burial place.

And he named it:

雁丘

The Wild Goose Mound.

From that small grave came one of the most enduring questions in classical Chinese literature.

Grandevity Studio’s Mo Yu Er · The Wild Goose Mound uses the project-established version of Yuan Haowen’s original lyric as 100% of the sung Chinese text.

There is no modern lyrical expansion.

No vernacular rewriting.

No newly written chorus.

No rearrangement of famous lines.

No original line is repeated merely to lengthen the song.

From:

問世間，情是何物

to:

來訪雁丘處

the words remain Yuan Haowen’s.

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Watch the MV: 🎬 Mo Yu Er · The Wild Goose Mound | Official Music Video

Headphones recommended. The film begins beside the Fen River in northern China during the Jin dynasty. Two wild geese fly together above reeds, open country and distant mountains. A young human couple provides a visual counterpoint to the geese rather than replacing their story. As the poem moves from companionship to separation, both visual lines change from two figures to one. By the final snowbound sequence, only Yuan Haowen, a solitary goose, evening snow and the Wild Goose Mound remain.

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A Grave for Two Wild Geese

The unusually concrete origin of the poem matters.

In 1205,

Yuan Haowen was still very young.

While travelling toward Bingzhou for the civil examinations,

he encountered a hunter.

The hunter explained that he had captured one wild goose and killed it.

The other escaped.

It could have flown away.

Instead,

it circled overhead in distress,

crying,

before throwing itself down and dying.

Yuan purchased both birds and buried them beside the Fen River.

The stones he piled above them became the:

Wild Goose Mound.

The poem therefore begins not with a theoretical idea of devotion.

It begins with a physical event.

Two animals.

A death.

A second death.

And a young observer trying to understand what he has encountered.

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“What Is Love?”

問世間，情是何物， 直教生死相許？

Yuan does not define love.

He asks what it is.

That distinction is essential.

The poem offers no philosophical formula.

Its question arises from an action that seems to exceed ordinary survival.

One bird is dead.

The other remains physically free to continue living.

Yet it does not.

Faced with that,

the poet can only ask:

what kind of attachment could make life and death answer one another?

The question has survived partly because Yuan himself never closes it.

---

“Two Travellers Flying Across North and South”

天南地北雙飛客， 老翅幾回寒暑。

These are not two creatures that have only just met.

They are travellers.

They have crossed north and south together.

Their ageing wings have passed through repeated seasons of cold and heat.

The word:

老翅

ageing wings

changes the scale of the loss.

This is companionship measured across time.

The tragedy is not simply that death occurs.

It is that death breaks something that has endured.

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Joy and Separation

歡樂趣， 離別苦， 就中更有癡兒女。

Joy.

Then separation.

The poem moves between them with almost brutal speed.

Only because companionship has contained genuine joy

can separation become genuine suffering.

Yuan uses the language of human feeling to understand the geese.

They enter the same world of attachment as devoted human lovers.

---

“Where Can This Solitary Shadow Go?”

Then the scale of the landscape expands:

君應有語： 渺萬里層雲， 千山暮雪， 隻影向誰去？

Ten thousand miles of layered cloud.

A thousand mountains beneath evening snow.

And inside that enormous landscape:

one solitary shadow.

The world itself has not disappeared.

The clouds remain.

The mountains remain.

The snow remains.

What has disappeared is the one life that made the journey shared.

That is why:

隻影向誰去？

Where can this solitary shadow go?

moves beyond the story of two birds.

It belongs to anyone who has ever had to continue living after losing the person who made the journey meaningful.

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The Fen River and Historical Memory

The second half begins:

橫汾路， 寂寞當年簫鼓， 荒煙依舊平楚。

The Fen River already carried older literary associations.

The celebrated river journey of Emperor Wu of Han had been remembered through boats, music and imperial splendour.

But Yuan writes:

寂寞當年簫鼓。

The flutes and drums of those former days are now silent.

Only desolate haze remains over the open land.

The poem has suddenly expanded beyond two geese.

Imperial spectacle also disappears.

Power disappears.

Celebration disappears.

Human lives disappear.

---

Summoning the Dead

招魂楚些何嗟及， 山鬼暗啼風雨。

The imagery moves into the literary world of the Chu Ci.

“Summoning the soul” evokes the tradition of Zhaohun.

“Mountain Spirit” evokes the haunted atmosphere of the Nine Songs.

It is as though language itself attempts to bring the dead back.

But:

何嗟及

lament comes too late.

Death cannot be reversed.

---

“Even Heaven Is Jealous”

Then only three characters:

天也妒。

Even Heaven is jealous.

The line offers no explanation.

Its force lies in that refusal to explain.

If such devotion truly exists,

it seems almost excessive even for the order of Heaven.

Something this intense appears too rare,

too absolute,

too difficult for the world to hold.

---

Not Merely Buried with the Swallows

未信與， 鶯兒燕子俱黃土。

Physically,

all creatures ultimately return to earth.

Yet Yuan refuses to believe these geese will simply disappear into the same anonymity as ordinary birds.

Something has changed.

They have been witnessed.

Buried.

Named.

Written.

Memory has entered the story.

---

“A Thousand Autumns and Ten Thousand Ages”

The closing movement expands time beyond any individual life:

千秋萬古， 為留待騷人， 狂歌痛飲， 來訪雁丘處。

A moment beside the Fen River suddenly becomes:

a thousand autumns,

ten thousand ages.

The bodies cannot last that long.

The birds cannot.

Even the mound itself may not.

What can travel forward is memory.

Language.

Story.

And later people who continue to visit the question.

---

From Death to Remembrance

Structurally,

the poem appears to move from life into death.

Its deeper final movement does something else.

It moves from death into remembrance.

The geese die.

From the perspective of natural life,

the event is over.

Yuan Haowen performs two acts:

he buries them,

and he writes them.

Those acts convert a private death into cultural memory.

That is why the final image is not merely a grave.

It is:

來訪雁丘處。

Coming to visit the Wild Goose Mound.

The existence of future visitors completes the poem.

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Yuan Haowen and the Text That Survives

Yuan Haowen lived from 1190 to 1257.

His courtesy name was Yuzhi,

and his literary name was Yishan.

He became one of the most important writers of the late Jin dynasty.

The Wild Goose Mound event of 1205 formed the original starting point of the lyric.

However, Yuan later noted in the preface:

舊所作無宮商，今改定之。

His earlier version had lacked proper musical regulation,

and he had now revised it.

The text known today should therefore not be treated simply as an untouched poem written immediately by a teenager in 1205.

It was later reconsidered and revised.

That matters.

Yuan Haowen eventually lived through warfare,

the collapse of the Jin dynasty,

and the deaths and dispersal of many people around him.

He later devoted enormous effort to preserving Jin-period literary and historical memory.

For later readers,

The Wild Goose Mound can therefore hold more than romantic devotion.

It can also contain:

loss,

historical destruction,

memory,

survival,

and resistance to oblivion.

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Music: From Two in Flight to One Solitary Shadow

The musical direction is:

Early-2000s Taiwan–Hong Kong Soulful Mandopop × Cinematic R&B

Tempo: 70 BPM.

Meter: 6/8.

The lead vocal is a mature, warm and restrained Mandarin baritone.

The production avoids operatic delivery,

excessive high notes,

and exaggerated vibrato.

The core arrangement includes:

• Rhodes piano
• nylon-string guitar
• neo-soul bass
• brushed drums
• cello
• chamber strings
• subtle guqin harmonics
• sparse xiao textures

The opening remains intimate.

“What is love?” is not shouted.

The song must first establish companionship.

At:

渺萬里層雲， 千山暮雪， 隻影向誰去？

the musical landscape opens fully for the first time.

The world becomes larger.

The solitary figure becomes smaller.

The second half gradually darkens after the Fen River section.

Before:

天也妒

the arrangement tightens again.

The largest musical space is reserved for:

千秋萬古。

After:

來訪雁丘處

the voice does not return.

There is no repeated chorus.

No final repetition of the opening question.

Only the instrumental outro remains.

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The MV: From Two to One

The visual world is grounded in northern China during the Jin dynasty.

Its recurring elements include:

the Fen River,

reed banks,

open country,

distant mountains,

rain,

evening snow,

wild geese,

and the Wild Goose Mound.

The geese remain realistic birds.

They are not anthropomorphised.

Their bond is communicated through movement:

flying together,

circling,

calling,

separation,

and solitary flight.

The MV also introduces a young human couple.

They are not replacements for the birds.

Nor does the project claim that Yuan’s original lyric is literally about this fictional couple.

Their purpose is visual counterpoint.

Two geese.

Two people.

Two forms of companionship.

As the lyric moves toward separation,

both visual structures change.

At:

隻影向誰去？

the grammar of the film shifts decisively from two figures to one.

By the end,

the human lovers have disappeared from the visual narrative.

Only:

Yuan Haowen,

a solitary goose,

evening snow,

and the mound

remain.

The core visual movement is therefore:

two in flight → separation → solitary shadow → mound → remembrance.

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📜 Complete Sung Text / Original Chinese with English Translation

Yuan Haowen, Mo Yu Er · The Wild Goose Mound
100% project-established original text・No modern expansion・No rewriting・No added lyrics・No repeated original lines

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Eight Centuries Later, the Question Still Has No Final Answer

Yuan Haowen never tells us what love is.

He leaves:

two geese,

two deaths,

a burial mound,

and a question.

Generations after him have read that question through their own lives.

Love.

Separation.

Grief.

Memory.

Continuing after loss.

That may be why:

問世間，情是何物？

still does not feel like a completed quotation.

It feels like a question still being asked.

This project does not answer it.

It simply allows Yuan Haowen to ask it once again.

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💿 Credits

• Song Title: Mo Yu Er · The Wild Goose Mound
• Chinese Title: 摸魚兒・雁丘詞
• Romanised Title: Mo Yu Er · Yanqiu Ci
• Classical Source: Yuan Haowen, Mo Yu Er · Yanqiu Ci
• Author: Yuan Haowen
• Period: Jin Dynasty
• Literary Form: Ci lyric
• Original Text / Complete Sung Words: Yuan Haowen
• Lyrics Format: 100% project-established original text, with no modern expansion, vernacular rewriting, added lyrics or repeated original lines
• Text Order: Strictly follows the version adopted for the finished song
• Music Style: Early-2000s Taiwan–Hong Kong Soulful Mandopop × Cinematic R&B
• Tempo / Meter: 70 BPM / 6/8
• Vocals: Suno AI mature, warm Mandarin baritone
• Main Instrumentation: Rhodes / Nylon-string Guitar / Neo-Soul Bass / Brushed Drums / Cello / Chamber Strings / Guqin Harmonics / Xiao Textures
• Composition / Arrangement: Suno AI v5.5
• Music Production: Grandevity Limited / Grandevity Studio
• AI-Assisted Visuals: ChatGPT Images
• Video Editing / Art Direction / Creative Production: Grandevity Studio
• Project: Classical Literature Reimagined in Music
• Released by: Grandevity Limited
• Production Year: 2026
• Official MV: https://youtu.be/vX_gy-HA0WU
• YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nexjkGBKgyqnFMlrH7BwsguC6HzsCbsRk

Music Style and Mood:

Early-2000s Taiwan–Hong Kong Soulful Mandopop × Cinematic R&B at 70 BPM in 6/8. A mature, warm and restrained Mandarin baritone carries Yuan Haowen’s complete lyric over Rhodes, nylon-string guitar, neo-soul bass, brushed drums, cello and chamber strings, with only subtle guqin harmonics and sparse xiao textures. The opening remains intimate; “evening snow over a thousand mountains, where can this solitary shadow go?” creates the first fully expanded soundscape; the Fen River section darkens the arrangement; “Even Heaven is jealous” tightens it again; and “a thousand autumns and ten thousand ages” opens the final and widest emotional space. After “visit the Wild Goose Mound,” no lyric returns.

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⚖️ Copyright Notice

Yuan Haowen’s Mo Yu Er · The Wild Goose Mound is a public-domain classical literary work.

This musical production uses 100% of the project-established original Classical Chinese lyric adopted for the finished song. No modern lyrical expansion, vernacular rewriting, newly added lyrics or other newly written lyric sections have been introduced, and no original line is repeated merely to extend the work.

The music production, recorded master, arrangement, mix, master, MV visuals, cover artwork, video editing, subtitles, shot design, art direction, promotional writing and overall creative production were produced by or lawfully licensed to Grandevity Limited / Grandevity Studio. Relevant rights are retained and administered subject to applicable law and the terms of the platforms and production tools used.

© 2026 Grandevity Limited / Grandevity Studio. All Rights Reserved.

Unauthorized re-uploading, redistribution, reproduction, editing, sampling, commercial use, platform distribution, AI training, dataset use, remixing, or incorporation into another audiovisual work is prohibited except where otherwise permitted by applicable law or license. This notice does not restrict lawful use of Yuan Haowen’s public-domain original text.

Licensing Contact:

info@grandevity.co.nz

https://grandevity.co.nz

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About This Project

Mo Yu Er · The Wild Goose Mound is part of Grandevity Studio’s Classical Literature Reimagined in Music series.

Some classical works invite adaptation.

Some invite expansion.

Others are already complete.

This lyric belongs to the last category.

The original text already moves from:

companionship,

to separation,

to solitary flight,

to death,

to history,

to memory,

and finally to eternity.

Nothing needed to be added.

More than eight centuries later,

we have not tried to answer Yuan Haowen’s question.

We have simply allowed it to be heard again:

問世間，情是何物？

What is love?