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spouting upwards and overwhelming the landscape. In both “Passing Fire Mountain” and “Song of Fire
Mountain Clouds”, this sub-theme describes a Fire Mountain that “towers” (tuwu 突 兀 ) over an existent
of lesser altitude, namely Puchang 蒲 昌 and Chiting 赤 亭 . And while still dominating its section of the
frontier, Fire Mountain in “Mission to Jiaohe” is simply “lofty” (cuiwei 崔 嵬 ) without any immediate
existent over which to display its impressive altitude. However, with its different thermal theme, the
opening sub-thematic trajectory of “Song of Hot Lake” unsurprisingly diverges from its cousins'
course: the poet-narrator in this instance focalizes the waters of Hot Lake which “seem to boil” (shui ru
zhu 水 如 煮 ).
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5.1.2. Echoes of Ordinary Perceptual Facets
Following the opening lines' establishment of the thermal theme and its initial sub-thematic
development, parallels in focalization, while advancing in a less uniform fashion, continue between the
poems. 20 For example, the poet-narrators of “Passing Fire Mountain” and “Mission to Jiaohe” retain
between them a strong affinity of focalization through two types of lenses: the dermal and oculardermal.
Aside from having selected the sub-theme “height”, the poet-narrators of these two poems also
decompose the Fire Mountain theme into the same sub-thematic constituent, the “scorching winds”
(yanfeng 炎 风 ) which wrap around the mountain:
我 来 严 冬 时
山 下 多 炎 风
I arrived when the year was at its coldest,
Below the mountain many scorching winds.
(“Passing Fire Mountain”, lines 7-8)
九 月 尚 流 汗
炎 风 吹 沙 埃
In the ninth month and still sweating,
Scorching winds blow sand and dust.
20 As with “Song of Hot Lake”, the heat of the frontier in “Song of Fire Mountain Clouds” manifests somewhat differently
compared to the other poems: it is the clouds of Fire Mountain, a sub-theme of the thermal landscape focalized visually
by the poet-narrator, which project the mountain's heat over the land. Yet focalization of the thermal cloud's sub-themes
and the thermal sub-themes of the other poems do share certain similarities. These will be discussed shortly.