View/Open - University of Victoria

77
reinforced through a stacking of visual, thermal and auditory desolation:
长 城 飞 雪 下
High above the Great Wall snow falls,
边 关 地 籁 吟 At the frontier pass, the earth groans and moans. 138
蒙 蒙 九 天 暗 The entire sky 139 full of haziness,
霏 霏 千 里 深 Thickened snow stretches for a thousand li.
树 冷 月 恒 少 Trees cold, the moon rarely seen,
山 雾 日 偏 沉 Mountain fog, the sun just sinks.
况 听 南 归 雁 All the more when hearing the geese returning south,
140
切 思 胡 笳 音 Dreary and sad the sounds of the Hu pipe.
Such emotionally charged inhospitable frontiers, be they experienced or imagined, are legion;
commonplace variations include desert sands, aimless ambulations, and yellow hued grasses 141 even
when such motifs themselves “do not necessarily conform to any topographical reality”. 142 Cen Shen
also made direct descriptions of the frontier landscape; but unlike many of his predecessors and
contemporaries, Cen Shen could extricate himself at times from the frequent “literary” frontier
environment topics to “record fresh and original [perceptual] experiences”. 143 The most arresting
example of where Cen Shen enumerates the frontier's unwelcoming geographic aspects without
capitulating to convention is his often anthologized poem relating the alien heat of the Turpan basin,
138
The earth which moans are the “pipes of earth” groaning (dilaiyin 地 籁 吟 ). The “pipes of earth” appear in “On the
Levelling of All Things” (Qiwulun 齐 物 论 ) of the Zhuangzi 庄 子 : “That hugest of clumps of soil blows out breath, by
the name 'wind'...The recesses in mountain forests, the hollows that pit great trees a hundred spans round, are like
nostrils, like mouths, like ears...Hooting and hissing, sniffing, sucking, mumbling, moaning...The pipes of earth... are the
various hollows...” . See Burton Watson, tr., “The Sorting Which Even Things Out” in John Minford and Joseph S.M.
Lau, eds., Classical Chinese Literature: Volume I: From Antiquity to the Tang Dynasty (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2000), p. 220. 夫 大 块 噫 气 , 其 名 为 风 ... 山 林 之 畏 佳 , 大 木 百 围 之 窍 穴 , 似 鼻 , 似 口 , 似 耳 ... 激 者 , 謞 者 ,
叱 者 , 吸 者 , 叫 者 , 譹 者 ... 地 籁 则 众 窍 是 已 . See Cao Chuji 曹 础 基 ed., Zhuangzi qianzhu 庄 子 浅 注 (Beijing: Zhonghua
shuju 中 华 书 局 , 1982), pp. 16-17.
139
Literally the ninth, and highest, level of Heaven (jiutian 九 天 ), which here refers to the entirety of the sky.
140
YFSJ 24.357.
141
Such as the first of Wang Changling's “Below the Frontier” (“Saixiaqu sishou” 塞 下 曲 四 首 ): “Cicadas chirp within the
mulberry trees/The eighth month of the year, the road to Xiao Pass/Leaving the frontier, entering the frontier, is
cold/Everywhere the yellow reeds and grasses/Without interruption the young knights of You and Bing/ All grow old
with the dust of battlefields/Do not imitate those knight-errants/Boasting of their fine dark steeds” 蝉 鸣 空 桑 林 , 八 月 萧
关 道 . 出 塞 入 塞 寒 , 处 处 黄 芦 草 . 从 来 幽 并 客 , 皆 共 尘 沙 老 . 莫 学 游 侠 儿 , 矜 夸 紫 骝 好 . See QTS, juan 140, 1420.
142
Marie Chan, “The Frontier Poems of Ts'en Shen” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec.,
1978): 420-437, especially, p. 423
143
Ibid., p. 428.