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Cen Shen's own curiosity 46 (haoqi 好 奇 ) and interest in the unusual and peculiar (qi 奇 ) 47 are
also regarded as influencing how the poet saw the frontier landscape and then incorporated these sights
into his poetry. In reference to how Cen Shen's disposition towards the strange (qi 奇 ) can influence the
focus of his frontier verse, Liao cites lines one to four of “Tune: Remembering Chang'an, Two Verses,
48
Sent to Pang Que” (“Yi Chang'anqu erzhang ji Pang Que” 忆 长 安 曲 二 章 寄 庞 榷 ) to show how the
frontier sun transforms into the “Chang'an sun” (Chang'an ri 长 安 日 ) after the poet's homesick, yet also
quite unique, imagination alters the geographical feature of the northwestern sun and creates a new
phenomenon representative of his own psychological state: 49
东 望 望 长 安 Gazing east, gazing towards Chang'an, 50
正 值 日 初 出
Directly facing where the sun first appears.
长 安 不 可 见
Chang'an cannot be seen,
51 52
喜 见 长 安 日 Happily I see the Chang'an sun.
Although quite imaginative, this peculiar way of envisioning the frontier, Liao continues, remains
grounded in reality and is not an utterly fantastic approach to perceiving the frontier. This is a
completely reasonable observation when considering how those existents found in the poems which
were not native to central China were actually rather ordinary elements of the frontier's physical and
human environment, and only become truly bizarre when apprehended by readers accustomed to a
46 Qian Yechun, “Jingwushi haishi songbieshi”, p. 31.
47 Liao Li, “Cen Shen biansaishi de fengge tese”, pp. 267-268.
48 The correct“ 榷 ”is with the water, and not wood, radical.
49 Liao also refers to the snowflake-pear blossoms in “Song of White Snow” 白 雪 歌 as another case in which the poet's
uncommon imagination is responsible for generating a bizarre mood in the presentation of mutually exclusive natural
sights co-existing at a single moment: “Suddenly it is as if in one night the Spring wind arrives/pear blossoms of tens of
thousands of trees bloom” 忽 如 一 夜 春 风 来 , 千 树 万 树 梨 花 开 . See CSJJZ, p. 163. The QTS version (QTS 199.2050)
has “ 忽 然 ”(huran, suddenly) for “ 忽 如 ”(huru, suddenly as if), a variant which leads the couplet away from simile and
into the truly fantastic.
50 A synecdoche for home.
51 The YFSJ version has “ 但 ”for “ 喜 ”See YFSJ 91.1284. This variant would lead to a translation of “I only see the
Chang'an sun”. The poet-narrator's mood of the YFSJ version is certainly less joyful: rather than “happily” perceiving a
celestial representative of home, he “only” sees the empyreal entity, a possible suggestion being that his vision is
incomplete and haunted by the absence of Chang'an. See also chapter six where the YFSJ variant is discussed.
52 CSJJZ, p. 84.