Confucian Temple Poem for "Bai Yao Ming"

While in China on business, Brent stopped at the Confucian Temple in Nanjing where a Chinese "fortune poem" was composed for him, using his Chinese name of Bái Yào Míng (which roughly translates "White Dazzling Bright"; surnames in Chinese come first) as the opening line:

白耀明

(This name was bestowed on Brent by his first Chinese-language teacher, Debra Chou Robins, in 1986 while studying Mandarin at BYU.)

Commencing in the upper right hand corner, Brent's Chinese name appears horizontally. Like an acrostic, the poem continues vertically (from right to left, top to bottom) in 20 characters comprised of four stanzas of five characters each, with each line highlighting a trait or wish, beginning with each of his name's characters. The "last" character at the top (upper left corner) after Brent's name is the well-known good luck symbol of "fu," meaning "happiness."

A family friend, Chin-Li, has kindly provided a transliteration and translation of this 四句詩 (si ju shi = four-character poem), which is an example of a 箝字詩 (chien zi shi = condensed word poem), as follows (altered to read from left to right):

白龍傲大子 (Bai long ao da zi)
耀德展仁篇 (Yao de zhan ren pian)
明心似月亮 (Ming xin si yue liang)
福伴業興綿 (Fu ban ye xing mian)

This pure great dragon son
Spreads a page of his life with his dazzling virtue and goodness;
With a clear mind as bright or pure as the moon,
Good fortune and happiness will accompany prosperity forever.

There was another 白耀明 (Bai Yao Ming; same characters), who lived from 1893 to 1965. He was 回族 (Huí zú = of the minority Hui or Muslim ethnic group) in 雲南 (Yunnan Province). Educated in the law, he worked for many years for the Chinese government. He had a very good reputation and made great achievements in education and in the tea industry for the Hui minority people.   He passed away in Thailand. (The famous Chinese basketball player, Yao Ming (姚明), uses a different yet similar-sounding character for his surname of Yao.)

Cool.