View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
View/Open - University of Victoria
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
85<br />
the frontier and absence qualifying the Chinese interior.<br />
In addition to straightforward description and negation, the frontier, both as a topographical and<br />
cultural entity, was habitually construed by contrasting differences between its immediate strangeness<br />
with that <strong>of</strong> a distant, but familiar, China deep within the country's own borders. As with negation, this<br />
method also gestured towards that which was absent; the discontinuity between the two techniques,<br />
however, is characterized by the latter's comments on how phenomena located both on the border and<br />
in central China could still display certain inherent incongruities when contrasted against one another,<br />
disparities which were then consolidated into an illustration <strong>of</strong> the frontier itself.<br />
By demanding a certain degree <strong>of</strong> frontier familiarity, the approach <strong>of</strong> contrasting China's<br />
periphery with its interior as a mode <strong>of</strong> description was not a technique frequently realized. One pre-<br />
Tang example in which contrastive treatment is particularly pronounced is Lu Sidao's 卢 思 道 (535-<br />
586) “In the Army” (“Congjunxing” 从 军 行 ). After constructing a frontier environment from an array<br />
<strong>of</strong> peripheral place names and inclement weather conditions, the limits <strong>of</strong> the Chinese world are further<br />
assembled as a place <strong>of</strong> pure contrast in which seasonal changes seem to obey a separate set <strong>of</strong> natural<br />
laws:<br />
边 庭 节 物 与 华 异<br />
冬 霰 秋 霜 春 不 歇<br />
179<br />
The seasons and scenes <strong>of</strong> the frontier differ from<br />
the Chinese interior,<br />
Spring cannot disperse Winter's s<strong>of</strong>t hail or Autumn's frost.<br />
(lines 21-22)<br />
The previously excerpted “Frontier Song” concludes with a gesture <strong>of</strong> contrast, one <strong>of</strong>ten seen in the<br />
subgenre, where the inner and outer realms <strong>of</strong> China are, as in Lu Sidao's “In the Army”, differentiated<br />
by seasonal inconsistencies out <strong>of</strong> which the unfamiliarity <strong>of</strong> the frontier region itself is illustrated:<br />
179<br />
YFSJ 32.482