View/Open - University of Victoria

It should be noted, however, that frightened fowl are not an infrequent trope in Chinese poems
portraying a geography of fearful features. Preceding the thermally timid birds of Bao Zhao's “The
Song of Suffering From Heat” cited earlier, 34 the difficulties of aerial crossings had already signified a
wild and threatening landscape. General Ma Yuan's 马 援 (14 BCE – 49 AD) “The Wu Stream is
Deep” 35 (“Wuxi shen xing” 武 溪 深 行 ) is one such incipient instance where not only are birds thwarted
in their path (niao fei bu du 鸟 飞 不 度 ) but beasts as well dare not approach (shou bu gan lin 兽 不 敢 临 )
the dangerous phenomenon that is Wu stream:
滔 滔 武 溪 一 何 深 Flooding, flooding, the Wu stream – how deep!
鸟 飞 不 度
Birds cannot fly across,
兽 不 敢 临
Beasts dare not come down to its banks.
36
嗟 哉 武 溪 兮 多 毒 淫 Woe, the Wu stream is rife with virulent plague. 37
145
Centuries later in Li Bai's “Hard Ways to Shu” 38 (“Shu dao nan” 蜀 道 难 ), the brown crane, noted for
excellence in high altitude soaring, 39 indirectly expresses the magnitude and impenetrability of the
imaginatively enhanced and ever hazardous Shu mountains through the impossibility of flying over its
expressing intense heat: “In the fifth month fiery clouds amass/Steam burns heaven and earth red./Birds do not dare
fly,/You travel back like a tumbleweed” 五 月 火 云 屯 , 气 烧 天 地 红 . 鸟 且 不 敢 飞 , 子 行 如 转 蓬 . See CSJJZ, p. 111. Qi Le
himself was a famous Tang dynasty painter who after serving on the frontier at Lintao commandery 临 洮 , an area
equivalent roughly to modern day southwest Lintan 临 潭 , Gansu province, returned to Chang'an without having attained
success or recognition during his frontier service. See also Cen Shen's “Parting from Qi Le at Lintao Guesthouse”
(“Lintao keshe liubie Qi Si” 临 洮 客 舍 留 别 祁 四 ”), translated in chapter six of this thesis, for another moment of
separation from Qi Le.
34 “The hungry monkeys do not take it as a feeding ground/The morning birds dare not flutter or hover around” 饥 猿 莫 下
食 , 晨 禽 不 敢 飞 .
35 The “song was composed in A.D. 49...during a difficult campaign against a non-Chinese tribe at the Wu stream (which
runs from southern Hunan to northern Guangdong). The area was infested with a disease which killed many of the
Chinese troops, including General Ma himself”. See Hans H. Frankel, “The Development of Han and Wei Yueh-fu as a
High Literary Genre” in Shuen-fu Lin and Stephen Owen, ed., The Vitality of the Lyric Voice (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1986), pp. 255-286, especially p. 258.
36 YFSJ 74.1048.
37 Hans H. Frankel, tr., “The Development of Han and Wei Yuef-fu”, p. 258.
38 A yuefu topic which even before the Tang dynasty poets used to fictitiously describe the hardships and dangers of
travelling through the Shu 蜀 mountains of what is modern Sichuan 四 川 province. See Literature Research Centre of
the Chinese College of Social Sciences (Zhongguo shehuike xueyuan wenxue yanjiusuo 中 国 社 会 科 学 院 文 学 研 究 所 ),
ed., Tangshi xuanzhu 唐 诗 选 注 (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe 北 京 出 版 社 , 1982), p. 119. In Li Bai's version, the poetnarrator
“warns an imaginary traveller from Chang'an not to undertake the hardships of the journey through the
mountains”. See Stephen Owen, ed., Anthology of Chinese Literature, p. 213.
39 Tangshi xuanzhu, p. 121.