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胡 儿 十 岁 能 骑 马
39
Hu 40 lads, ten years old, can ride a horse. 41
The northern flank of the frontier incorporated areas such as Yanmen Pass 雁 门 (Dai county
代 县 in northeast Shanxi 山 西 province), the Yin mountains 阴 山 (a range of mountains stretching
from central Inner Mongolia to the northwest of Hebei 河 北 province and long regarded as the natural
boundary between the Hu 胡 [non-Chinese peoples] and Han [Chinese peoples] in many Tang poems),
and Xiao Pass 萧 关 (roughly the area of Guyuan county 固 原 县 in Ningxia 宁 夏 province). Poetic
references of these locales can be found, for example, in Wang Changling's 42 王 昌 龄 “On the
Frontier” (“Saishang qu” 塞 上 曲 ):
秋 风 夜 渡 河 Last night the autumn wind blew across the river,
吹 却 雁 门 桑
43
And stripped bare the mulberry trees around Yanmen Pass. 44
(lines 1-2)
The first of Wang's “Beyond the Frontier” (“Chusai ershou” 出 塞 二 首 )refers to the boundary formed
by the Yin mountains:
但 使 龙 城 飞 将 在
If only the Dragon City's Winged General 45 were here,
39 GSJJZ, p. 37
40 I've replaced “Tartar” with “Hu”, a term for north and northwestern non-Chinese, in order to balance the head of the line
with the Chinese “Lu” in the preceding line; a transference to pinyin from the Wade-Giles also occurred for “Yingzhou”
in order to maintain a consistency of phonetic representation throughout the thesis. Such shifts occur throughout when
citing sources written in Wade-Giles.
41 Modified version of Chan's translation; see Marie Chan, Kao Shih, p. 131.
42 “Wang Changling [698-756], with his interest in military life and the defence of borders...belong[s] to the group [of
High Tang poets]...consist[ing] of Gao Shi [and] Cen Shen...[poets] who excelled in depicting scenes from the far
frontiers and the life of the garrison soldiers” See Joseph J. Lee, Wang Ch'ang-ling (Boston: Twayne, 1982), p 90. In
order to avoid spreading examples too thinly, citations will be restricted, for the most part, to the frontier works of Cen
Shen, Gao Shi and Wang Changling, poets whose frontier-themed verse have long been cited as the apogee of Tang
frontier poetry.
43 QTS 140.1421.
44 Joseph J. Lee, tr., Wang Ch'ang-ling, p. 97.
45 Refers to the famous Han general Li Guang ( 李 广 , d. 119 BC) who dealt a decisive blow to the Xiongnu ( 匈 奴 , a
nomadic people of the north) after which border incursions into north China ceased. In the poem, “ 胡 ”is used in its
generic sense to refer to non-Chinese peoples of the frontier.