Verses at Night in Wuyuan, A Woman in the Desert

Advanced Scholar He of Zhao was traveling to Wuyuan in 827. While sleeping at night in the middle of the desert, he heard a woman within the sands reciting sadly. When he got up and asked her, she declared that her surname was Li, her family was from Xiaoli Village south of Shenyang, and while traveling to visit her older sister, she encountered some Danxiang Qiang people who killed her, it was three years ago already, and might he be able to return her bones to home—surely that was reasonable. He collected her bones as she said and carried them to Shenyang, where he asked after Xiaoli Village to bury her. Seeing this woman returned, they thanked him saying, “Our grandfather had The Kinship of the Three, per the ‘Changes’ and The Classic of Replenishing Primordial Chaos—his heirs could certainly obtain the cinnabar of immortals in just a few days.” He accepted this (since) the woman was already gone, and (later) He succeeded in investigating the deep mysteries of the laws of the world.

My cloud-hair gone completely—shifting aster seeds are scarce—
My buried bones are set in an unknown place amid the waste.
The herds of horses do not neigh, the moon is white on the sands—
A lonely soul—wild geese are flying southward one by one.

五原夜吟
作者：沙碛女子
〈进士赵合，太和初游五原，夜卧沙碛中，闻沙中女子悲吟。起问之，自陈姓李，家奉天城南小李村，往省姊，道遭党羌挝杀于此，今已三年，倘能归骨，必有以报。合如言收骨，携至奉天，访得小李村，葬之。明日，见此女来谢曰：“吾大父有《演参同契》，《续混元经》，子能穷之，龙虎之丹，不日成矣。”合受之，女子已没，合遂究其玄微，得度世。〉
云鬟消尽转蓬稀，
埋骨穷荒失所依。
牧马不嘶沙月白，
孤魂空逐雁南飞。

Wuyuan (“five springs”) is a common place name—the best-known was a border fort in what’s now Bayannur, western Inner Mongolia, but that seems a bit far afield: the Zhao region, named after the Warring State, corresponds to eastern Inner Mongolia and northern Shanxi and Hebei, while Shenyang is in modern Liaoning. An advanced scholar is someone who’s passed the highest level of triennial imperial exams. Note that in several places of the headnote, “He” is not the pronoun but the man’s surname (pronounced /huh/ in modern Mandarin, with an initial /h/ similar to the start of Hanukkah or the end of Bach). The Danxiang were the Tangut branch of the Qiang peoples, now mostly living in southeast Gansu and north Sichuan, but who historically ranged wider. The swerve into Doaist alchemy was, um, unexpected—the first book looks like an alternate title for this one, but my rendering of the second title is pure guesswork. Cinnabar was, of course, a common alchemical ingredient.

As for the ghost’s song, the aster seeds are the puffy wind-blown sort.

---L.