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蕃 书 文 字 别 Fan 66 documents and characters are different, 67
胡 俗 语 音 殊 Hu customs and pronunciations are unfamiliar.
愁 见 流 沙 北 Sorrowfully I see to the north the flowing sands,
68
天 西 海 一 隅 A corner at the end of the earth.
This extreme western area diverges from the recognizable not merely through its terrain but also the
linguistic and cultural nuances of its inhabitants, creating the impression of a land and people
describable only as a matter of negation (“no green grass”, “unfamiliar pronunciations”) and adjectives
suggestive of conditions clashing with one's expectations (a landscape that is “bizarre”, orthographies
and customs which are “different”).
Although the Tang frontier included other towns and settlements left unmentioned in the
preceding short introduction, it is hoped that a sense of the Tang northern borderlands, their topography
and human presence, has nonetheless been awakened in the reader's imagination. What follows in the
next chapter is an outline of the more salient themes of the poetry associated with the frontier, qualities
that may possess a certain poignancy for the reader after having imaginatively travelled, if only briefly,
through China's northern hinterlands.
66 Nomadic people of the north.
67 As in not the same as the Chinese language.
68 CSJJZ, p. 156.