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Beyond the Border, Wang Zihuan (Tang Shi #316)
Friday, 17 April 2020 10:19The distant Yellow River. Above, a gap in white clouds.
A single line of lonely wall in towering mountains.
A Qiang flute—who’s complaining with that willow song?
The spring winds still aren’t blowing through the Jade Gate Pass.
出塞
黄河远上白云间，
一片孤城万仞山。
羌笛何须怨杨柳，
春风不度玉门关。
This is also known as "Liangzhou Song" (that being a garrison in central Gansu), and was originally the first of a two-poem sequence. The mountains are literally "10,000 ren" or about 80,000 feet high. The Qiang are a non-Han people now mainly living in northern Sichuan but formerly ranging into Gansu and Qinghai provinces; the flute associated with them is a transverse bamboo model. The song is a popular one about parting in springtime. Jade Gate Pass in western Gansu (see #277) was where the Silk Road passed around the far western end of the Great Wall.
---L.
A single line of lonely wall in towering mountains.
A Qiang flute—who’s complaining with that willow song?
The spring winds still aren’t blowing through the Jade Gate Pass.
出塞
黄河远上白云间，
一片孤城万仞山。
羌笛何须怨杨柳，
春风不度玉门关。
This is also known as "Liangzhou Song" (that being a garrison in central Gansu), and was originally the first of a two-poem sequence. The mountains are literally "10,000 ren" or about 80,000 feet high. The Qiang are a non-Han people now mainly living in northern Sichuan but formerly ranging into Gansu and Qinghai provinces; the flute associated with them is a transverse bamboo model. The song is a popular one about parting in springtime. Jade Gate Pass in western Gansu (see #277) was where the Silk Road passed around the far western end of the Great Wall.
---L.