China and the West

Robert Burns and China : general
1991
Zhou Guozhen : Of all the poems translated and published in the past few decades, Robert Burns' are best understood and really appreciated in China where people have a special taste for poetical works. It is not very easy for a foreign poet to enjoy great popularity in this land, but Burns has done so ever since some of his poems were translated and published in a magazine for the first time in the twenties of this century. In 1959, for the bicentenary of his birth two collections of Burns' poems were published, translated by Yuan Kejia and Wang Zuoliang.
The reason why the readers in China love Burns' poems so much has two causes : first the immortality of themes – love and friendship, equality and fraternity, democracy and freedom and patriotism. His songs, for the most part, were direct transcriptions from personal experience. So it seems that his works of this group, owing to their deep and sincere feelings, express not one single mood or temperament, but the moods of thousands. Burns was a genuine democrat ; he loved liberty as the breath of life. He wrote a number of poems on social equality and human fraternity. The best known in China are Is there for honest poverty ? and The slave's lament. Burns' poems of this group find echoes in the hearts of Chinese readers, because democracy and freedom have always been lofty ideals for the Chinese people in general, and with the intelligentsia in particular, on account of the country having long been ruled by emperors from different races and invaded by foreign countries. Of the numerous Burns poems of patriotism, the most familiar to the readers in China are My hearts's in the highlands and Robert Bruce's march to Bannockburn.
The second reason for Burns' popularity is the magnetism of his poetry – simplicity, directness, enthusiasm and optimism. Burns deals with a great variety of themes. But no matter what he writes he is always vividly concrete and straightforward, with affection and hope for the future. These characteristics of his works make him a poet quite different in the method of thinking and in technique from most of his Chinese counterparts, either before of after him, even though they sometimes wrote on the same subjects ; Burns appears to the Chinese reader to be an entirely new type of poet with an exotic attraction both in ideological content and in style and manner.
2010
Commemorations of Robert Burns around the world
http://www.scotland.org/features/commemorations-of-robert-burns-around-the-world
Burns's poems have a resonance with traditional Chinese poetry, with themes about the land and love and a peasants struggles with life and an enduring love of his country. In fact, sixty years ago a translation of 'My Hearts in the Highlands' was adopted as the marching song of the Chinese resistance fighters in the Second World War! It's hard to underestimate the love felt for our Poet in China today.