Qin towers and Chu mansions here refer to pleasure quarters. Young farm‑bred men become infatuated with brothels, lingering so long that they lose track of spring and autumn.
They sell ancestral estates to pay for debts incurred by debauchery, abandoning provisions meant for supporting their parents.
“Abandoning” means to discontinue. Provisions are grain and food for supporting one’s parents. Debts are obligations owed. Debts of debauchery are money borrowed for consorting with courtesans. Burdened by heavy debts, they sell off all ancestral property, so that sustenance for their parents is wholly cut off.
They pawn their wives’ dowries for daily feasting and drinking, leaving their children’s hearth long cold.
To pawn is to pledge goods for money. A dowry is the clothing and jewellery a wife brings at marriage. Drunk and sated day and night in brothels, they pawn away their whole dowry. The home hearth goes cold, no rice remains for cooking, and their children suffer cold and hunger.
When gold by the bedside is spent, retributive diseases plague them relentlessly.
By the bedside means beside one’s pillow. “When gold by the bedside is spent” means one’s money is all gone. Retributive diseases refer to syphilis, gonorrhoea contracted in brothels, or bringing up blood and consumption brought on by excessive licentiousness. These afflictions stay with the sufferer. Brought about by one’s own misdeeds, they are called retributive diseases.
He collapses in the street; kinsfolk and friends pass by, holding their noses.
Given to licentiousness, he contracts poisonous sores and karmic ailments. Rejected and cast out by courtesans, he can no longer walk and collapses in the roadway. A foul stench hangs about him. Relatives and acquaintances passing by all hold their noses.
His life lingers but a moment; old friends grieve at the sight.