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uninterrupted throughout their migration from external to internal space, not only does the coldness of
the snow itself smoothly cross a ruptured spatial border and infiltrate “beaded curtains” (zhulian 珠 帘 ),
“silk drapes” (luomu 罗 幕 ), “fox fur clothing” (huqiu 狐 裘 ) and “thin resplendent blankets” (jinqiu bao
锦 裘 薄 ), the ubiquitous harshness of the northern temperature as well creeps through the delicately
furnished and permeable tent to undermine a potential, if ineffectual, source of warmth, and in the
process emphasize the frontier cold. The very delicacy of the scene, one in which the poet-narrator
superimposes an imaginary, and quite effete, vernal season onto the very real, and uncompromising,
hibernal, creates a false hope of heat; the hollow resistance mounted by furs and fancy furnishings only
exaggerates the chill of the“ground rolling northern wind” (beifeng juan di 北 风 卷 地 ) and “flying
snow” (fei xue 飞 雪 ).
The second interior scene, a space of fraternizing and musical entertainment, seems
hermetically sealed from the greater landscape of wind, snow and ice, a durable beacon of resistance
against the meteorological ravages at China's periphery. But the firmly established exterior order of
winter is never completely absent. Faced with “criss-crossing rails of ice a hundred meters thick”
(langan bai zhang bing 阑 干 百 丈 冰 ) and “evening snow falling pell-mell” (fenfen mu xue 纷 纷 暮 雪 ),
the warmth of the interior farewell party's music and convivial imbibing is weakened when juxtaposed
against the outdoor boreal blasts and glacial gloom. Regardless of the external temperature, the indoor
evening banquet held in honour of the capital bound “departing guest” (gui ke 归 客 ) also generates its
own dreadful draft of ephemerality in anticipation of the eventual separation between the poet-narrator
and Administrative Officer Wu. The poem ends with a final exterior scene of blocked vision and
explicit absence that reasserts the feeling of oppressive containment created not by perceptual shifts
from exteriority to interiority but by the outdoor snow of the frontier environment: 78
156
78 Ronald Miao, “T'ang Frontier Poetry”, p. 125.