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central China and its periphery are featured play an especially significant role in the thematic growth of
frontier poetry, particularly when addressing Xiao Chengyu's second thematic pillar of frontier poetry:
poems about, or frequently referring to, frontier peoples and customs. Aside from those numerous
poems in which the various facets of frontier military campaigns are of particular focus, such as
“Fighting South of the City” (“Zhongchengnan” 战 城 南 ), “On the Frontier” (“Saishang qu” 塞 上 曲 ),
and “Beyond the Frontier” (“Chusai” 出 塞 ), the Yuefu collection also contained poems which
generated the images that would be later expanded in descriptions of northern non-Chinese lands, their
unfamiliar customs, and the cruel sense of isolation felt by those forced to live there in both military
and non-military situations. A compact example in which these three themes interact with one another
is the “Song of the Wusun Princess” 56 (“Wusun gongzhu ge” 乌 孙 公 主 歌 ), a text whose sights of an
alien land and customs forecast important frontier poetry themes of being stationed in a strange
environment far from home while longing for friends and family: 57
30
吾 家 嫁 我 兮 天 一 方 My family married me off; I'm now at the end of the sky, 58
远 托 异 国 兮 乌 孙 王
穹 庐 为 室 兮 旃 为 墙
以 肉 为 食 兮 酪 为 浆
居 常 土 思 兮 心 内 伤
愿 为 黄 鹄 兮 归 故 乡
59
Far away and living in a strange land with a Wusun king.
A yurt serves as my room, felt blankets my wall,
Meat is my food, yoghurt is my drink.
I miss my land most of the time; it pains my heart,
I want to become a yellow swan and return home.
Yuefushiji ( 乐 府 诗 集 , Collected Music Bureau Poems) by Guo Maoqian 郭 茂 倩 (1041-1099)” See Joseph R. Allen, In
the Voice of Others:Chinese Music Bureau Poems (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992), p. 39. Among its
numerous themes, those of the emotional and physical trials of having to survive in strange foreign lands, through forced
political marriages as well as military service, play an especially vital role in the development of frontier poems which
stress a sense of alienation and unfamiliarity experienced in such places. The greatest concentration of frontier themed
yuefu poems are collected under 横 吹 曲 (heng chui qu) of the Yuefu shiji (where eleven of the eighteen sub-categories
of yuefu topics are related to the frontier). For a an examination on the relation between this category of Yuefu poems
and frontier verse, especially how Southern Dynasty (420-589) examples contributed to the development of Tang
frontier verse in terms of imagery, allusions and sentiment, see Han Ning 韩 宁 and Xu Wenwu 徐 文 武 , “Hengchuiqu
yu biansai shi 横 吹 曲 与 边 塞 诗 ”Hebei daxue xuebao 河 北 大 学 学 报 ( 哲 学 社 会 科 学 版 ) 2006.3, pp. 42-46.
56 The title refers to Liu Xijun 刘 细 君 , a Han princess married off to a Wusun 乌 孙 chieftain in an effort by Han Wudi 汉
武 帝 (Emperor Wu of Han) to forge an alliance against the Xiongnu. The Wusun themselves were a nomadic people
living in what is now northwest Xinjiang province.
57 Kam-lung Ng, “Tangdai biansaishi yanjiu”, p. 36.
58 Meaning “in a remote place”
59 Guo Maoqian 郭 茂 倩 ed. Yuefushiji 乐 府 诗 集 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中 华 书 局 , 1979), 84.1186. Hereafter