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13
胡 人 半 解 弹 琵 琶
54
The majority of Hu people there know how to play the pipa. 55
(lines 3-4)
Yumen Pass is located near today's Anxi county 安 西 县 in Gansu province. Both Cen Shen's “ Song of
General Gai at Yumen Pass” (“Yumen guan Gai Jiangjun ge” 玉 门 关 盖 将 军 歌 ) and the seventh of
Wang Changling's “In the Army” (“Congjun xing qishou” 从 军 行 七 首 ) derive from Yumen Pass a
thick sense of isolation, darkness and desolation. The first excerpt is from Cen Shen's poem:
玉 门 关 城 迥 且 孤
黄 沙 万 里 白 草 枯
56
The walls of Yumen Pass are far away and isolated,
Yellow sands for miles, withered white grass.
And Wang's text:
(lines 4-5)
玉 门 山 嶂 几 千 重
Encircling Jade-gate Pass a range of a thousand mountains,
山 北 山 南 总 是 烽
57
On the mountains north and south are beacon mounds. 58
(lines 25-26)
Some of the furthest western stretches of the Tang frontier fall under the poetic purview of Cen
Shen as it was his poetry – more so than any other writer's – which brought the most extreme periphery
of the empire into the popular imagination. 59 Through official appointments to the staff of military
governors in the northwest, Cen Shen was able to describe a Central Asian landscape alien to the
familiar scenes of Chinese poetry. His first assignment (749-752) was a secretarial position on the staff
of Gao Xianzhi 高 仙 芝 (d. 756), the regional commander of Anxi (Anxi Duhu fu 安 西 都 护 府 ) whose
54 Chen Tiemin 陈 铁 民 Hou Zhongyi 侯 忠 义 ed. Cen Shen ji jiaozhu 岑 参 集 校 注 (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe 古 籍 出 版
社 1979), p. 144. Here after abbreviated as CSJJZ
55 A pear-shaped stringed instrument sometimes referred to as a Chinese lute.
56 QTS 197.2058.
57 QTS 143.1444.
58 Joseph J. Lee, tr., Wang Ch'ang-ling, p. 100.
59 Ren Wenjing, Tangdai biansaishi de wenhua chanshi, p. 139.