朱朱紫紫 Reds and Purples Contending
逐句解 Line by line
The peony balustrade and the tree-peony clump, reds and reds and purples and purples contending in rich splendour;
Two different peonies: 芍藥 is the herbaceous kind and 牡丹 the woody tree peony, which the Tang made the flower of wealth and rank. 穠華 is thick, heavy blossom, and the doubled colour words give the line its bustle.
the night-closing terrace and the jasmine railing, year upon year putting out their charms;
夜合 is the silk tree, whose leaves fold together at night — the name means night-joining, and in a garden laid out for a wedding it is not an innocent plant to grow on a terrace.
trickling with dew, the purple han-xiao, fit to be painted and fit to be drawn;
含笑 is the han-xiao, a magnolia relative whose name means holding a smile, because the flowers never open fully. It is a real plant and the pun is unavoidable in Chinese: the garden is full of flowers that are half-smiling.
The plant names in this stretch are all doing double work and a Chinese reader gets both meanings at once. The silk tree is called night-joining because its leaves fold at dusk. The magnolia relative is called holding-a-smile because its buds stay half shut.
Put them in a garden where a fiend is walking hand in hand with a monk she intends to marry that evening, and the names stop being botany. This is the same technique as the Yang Guifei allusion earlier: ornament that is also commentary.
The peonies are the straightest thing here. The tree peony was the Tang flower of wealth and honour, painted on everything, and a garden with a whole clump of them is simply announcing its owner's standing.