An old friend bade farewell to Yellow Crane Tower in the west, and sailed down to Yangzhou through March's mist and blossoms.
His lone sail dwindled into the blue sky's farthest reaches; only the Yangtze River remained, flowing along the edge of heaven.
In this poem, the phrase "March's mist and blossoms" alone captured all the springtime splendor of both banks of the great river.
Unfortunately, Zhang Xing and his companions had not sailed downstream through March's mist and blossoms. They had come in the depths of winter and could see none of the banks' magnificent scenery... Stranger still, while they were on the Han River with a dragon stretched along its bed, everyone had merely felt that traveling downstream made the boat too fast and the wind too cold, without any other discomfort. But the moment they left the Han River and entered the great river in Jiangxia Commandery, all sorts of trouble immediately arose.
First people became seasick, and even horses did too. Qin Bao's treasured Lumpy Spotted Beast vomited and had diarrhea; never mind meat, it could not even keep plain water down, leaving Qin Erlang frantic as though his heart were on fire. Then came rain and wind-driven waves. Those were manageable, since traveling downstream soon took them out of the rainy stretch, but afterward someone fell overboard because ice after the rain had made the deck slippery...
That last incident was nearly fatal. Fortunately, a Core Formation expert aboard flew straight down and fished the person out, though the rescued passenger was still terribly cold and huddled aboard, shivering.
All these wretched misfortunes, however, vanished completely once the Patrol Group reached the waters of Danyang Commandery.
Upon entering this stretch, the government ship traveling downstream suddenly slowed, and its course shifted roughly northward. At that