View/Open - University of Victoria

33
and separation often found on the frontier. While not a major aspect of later frontier poetry,
empathizing with northern non-Chinese, rather than fearing or despising them, does form a minor trope
among poems of intercultural encounters on the border. “Ancient Song of the Xiongnu” is one such
precursor: 69
失 我 焉 支 山
令 我 妇 女 无 颜 色
失 我 祁 连 山
72
使 我 六 畜 不 蕃 息
I've lost my Yanzhi 70 mountain,
It's caused our women to become pale.
I've lost my Qilian 71 mountain,
It's forced our animals 73 to become barren.
74
The middle lines of Li Qi's 李 颀 “In the Army 75 ” (“Gucongjun xing” 古 从 军 行 ) includes a
couplet redolent with this early, if also exceedingly rare, sympathy in which the people of the frontier
are not cast merely as invaders or uncivilized barbarians but as human and emotional entities capable of
responding to loss and loneliness:
野 云 万 里 无 城 郭
雨 雪 纷 纷 连 大 漠
胡 雁 哀 鸣 夜 夜 飞
The clouds on the plain stretch for ten-thousand li, there
are no city walls in sight,
Rain and snow continuously fall and meet up with the
desert.
Frontier geese 76 cry plaintively and fly throughout the
night,
69 Kam-lung Ng, “Tangdai biansaishi yanjiu”, p. 37.
70 Refers to Yanzhishan 燕 支 山 in modern Gansu province.
71 Mountain range which straddles Qinghai and Gansu provinces.
72 YFSJ 84.1186.
73 Literally “six domestic animals”: horse, ox, sheep, pig, dog and chicken
74 Along with Gao Shi, Cen Shen and Wang Changling, Li Qi (690-751) is also often regarded as a frontier poet, though
one whose output in the subgenre is substantially less than that of Gao, Cen and Wang. See Marie Chan, Cen Shen, p.
75.
75 “In the Army” is a yuefu theme whose content refers generally to situations on the frontier and the life of soldiers
serving in such regions. See Sun Quanmin 孙 全 民 ed., Tangdai biansaishi xuanzhu 唐 代 边 塞 诗 选 注 (Hefei:
Huangshan shushe 黄 山 书 社 出 版 社 , 1992), p. 1.
76 Literally “Hu” geese. “As a migratory bird, the wild goose...can be a harbinger of separation [as well as being] regarded
as [a] messenger, bearer of glad tidings from a spouse far away in northern lands” See Wolfram Eberhard, A Dictionary
of Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 132. In
this instance, the former implication seems to have far greater potential than the latter.