The Red Thread Carpet

Red thread carpet -
choice cocoons, reeled silk, pure water for boiling,
select silk, boiled to softness, then dyed in safflower
till the red-dyed threads are redder than safflower,
then woven as a carpet for Pixiang Hall.

And Pixiang Hall is big, ten zhang or more,
yet the red thread carpet can fit it exactly,
the variegated silk so soft and fragrant,
the threads so fine and smooth, yielding to everything.
When beautiful girls tread their measures and sing,
their silken stockings and embroidered shoes sink deeply in.

Carpets from Taiyuan are rough with hard threads.
Carpets from Sichuan are elegant but thin and cold,
not like this carpet, both warm and soft,
sent each year from Xuanzhou in the tenth month.

The prefect from Xuanzhou adds a novel pattern
and says he will spare no effort for the Emperor.
A hundred men together bear the tribute to the palace,
so thickly woven that it cannot be rolled up.

Prefect of Xuanzhou, do you know or don't you,
one zhang of carpet means a thousand taels of silk?
The ground does not know cold but people need warmth.
Still this young lord snatches away clothes from the people
to make clothes for the ground.