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use of the horse in a war-related role. The galloping mount in Cen Shen's poem, however, is not
presented merely as “horse” (ma 马 ) but is explicitly a “hunting horse” (lie ma 猎 马 ), an equine
identity enhanced by the kinetic potential of the horse, one which also incarnates the martial quality of
Bao Zhao's earlier steed should Xiongnu horses used for the purposes of hunting also lead military
advances when required.
Even with such a brief and narrowly focused intertextual reading between Bao Zhao and Cen
Shen's lines, the early structure of the frontier landscape in terms of how subzero temperatures affect
the inanimate (armour) and living (horses), and how such a representation was treated by writers from
one era (Southern dynasty) to another (Tang), is revealed. However, Bao Zhao's influence on the
evolution of frontier poetry is not limited to bows and filamentous bio-matter. In Luo Chunlan's
discussion 101 of the impact Bao Zhao's frontier poems had on High Tang treatment of the frontier
subgenre, the fourteen poems, of an oeuvre of over two-hundred, frontier works attributed to Bao Zhao
are read as having established the ideological, imagistic and stylistic parameters of later frontier poetry.
Previous poetic works on frontier themes are considered in Luo's essay as having been streamlined by
Bao Zhao's frontier poetry into a nascent frontier subgenre, a subgenre of poetry which would burgeon
under the brushes of the High Tang's most notable poets. These traces of Bao Zhao's works, however,
are not restricted to frontier landscape descriptions: frontier poems in the High Tang praising heroic
deeds having taken place on China's northern borders, expressions of frustrated aspirations in serving
one's country, the hardship of military service and encounters with non-Chinese peoples have their
stylistic roots in Bao Zhao's frontier poems even if the themes themselves have earlier pedigrees.
The aesthetic figuration of the frontier landscape continued throughout the Southern Dynasty
period after Bao Zhao's pioneering works were composed; in fact, it had already become a literary
custom to write frontier-themed works despite very few poets of the era possessing any personal
101 Luo Chunlan 罗 春 兰 , “Tui zhe mo yun, dai mo ming yuan zhi lei: shengtang biansai shi dui Bao Zhao de Jieshou” 推 折
默 云 , 殆 摩 明 远 之 垒 : 盛 唐 边 塞 诗 对 鲍 照 的 接 受 Lanzhou xuekan 兰 州 学 刊 2006.1, pp. 92-97.