Reflections on Bao Rong’s “Song of the Frontier”

Recently, I was uploading photos from last year’s wanderings through the western regions to my image hosting service. I looked through them again and again, unable to settle on any particular angle — content simply to lose myself in the memory of that journey, at once fleeting and eternal.

Whenever I come across the photographs from Bayanbulak, the first thing that echoes through my mind is the Mongolian long song “The Swan Geese,” followed by the line: “Such scenery belongs only to heaven; how seldom is it glimpsed in the mortal world.” It turns over and over in my thoughts, leaving me incapable of coherent reflection. So I searched for classical Chinese poems depicting the grasslands beyond the northern frontier, and immediately gravitated toward this piece by Bao Rong. I read it carefully, and here are my thoughts.

Song of the Frontier
Bao Rong, Tang Dynasty

The west wind rises in season, bow-horns stiffen,
Dew-laden, horses graze amid frigid grass and water.
Pitiful, the Yellow River’s nine bends reach their end,
Felt tents stand sparse and forlorn, the nomads vanished.

This photograph was taken at the Nine-Bend Eighteen-Turn of Bayanbulak, around eight in the evening. I had already been stationed on the hillside for six hours.

The sky had been clear and boundless, but suddenly the clouds surged and churned, blotting out the sun. I was in the middle of my mosquito-repelling dance when I was struck by the inexplicability of it all — the weather, the grassland, the sheer beauty of it. Everything defied comprehension.

Bao Rong lived during the mid-Tang dynasty. Records about him are scarce today, but in the late Tang he was praised as a “master of broad insight and extraordinary talent,” ranked alongside Bai Juyi and four others.

It is genuinely difficult, from our modern vantage point, to grasp what literati of that era felt upon venturing beyond the frontier. After all, we approach such places as tourists. They were different. On the one hand, they carried the thrill of the unknown — raised in the heartland of the great Tang, they had never truly witnessed the vast, magnificent landscapes of the northern steppes, and the experience must have been profoundly overwhelming. On the other hand, that endless desolation, the yearning for a distant homeland, the anxiety over nomadic incursions and the ever-present specter of war — all of these cast a melancholic pall over the soul. Even though this poem bears the imagery of triumph, beneath that pride I still sense the helplessness the poet wished to convey.

Had they not been burdened by affairs of state, had they not felt compelled to “worry before the world worries, rejoice only after the world rejoices,” had they been free to wander at leisure through those boundless, silent, earth-shaking grasslands — how many magnificent poems might they have left us? I believe that what made Li Bai Li Bai had everything to do with his youthful wanderings, his travels from west to east. Only those who have witnessed grandeur on that scale can possess such boundless imagination and such transcendence of spirit. It is, after all, “When life fulfills your heart, seize the moment; let not the golden goblet sit empty beneath the moon.” To carry such magnanimity is no easy thing. I have not encountered anyone like that in many years, and I feel my own solitude all the more keenly.

读鲍溶《塞上行》有感

近日将去年在西域游荡的照片上传到图床上，看来看去，没想出什么思路，只是自我陶醉在那段短又长的旅途中。每当我看到巴音布鲁克的照片，脑子里首先回想起蒙古长调《鸿雁》，其次是那句”此景只应天上有，人间哪得几回见”，翻来覆去，让人无法思考。遂搜索了一番古代描写塞外草原风景的诗歌，一下看中了鲍溶这首，拿来细细品读，感想如下。

《塞上行》
唐·鲍溶

西风应时筋角坚，承露牧马水草冷。
可怜黄河九曲尽，毡馆牢落胡无影。

此图拍摄于巴音布鲁克九曲十八弯处，此时应是下午八时左右，我已在山上驻守了六个小时。

本来晴空万里，突然云层翻涌，可谓遮天蔽日，我正跳着驱蚊舞，顿时感到天气不可思议，草原不可思议，美景不可思议。

鲍溶是中唐时期的人物，现在对他记载不多，但在晚唐曾被人称为”博解宏拔主”，与白居易等五人并驾齐驱。

其实现在很难感受到当时的文人来到塞外的心情，毕竟我们是抱着旅游的心态，但是他们不一样，他们一方面有着猎奇的心里，生长在东土大唐，从未真正见过塞外这辽阔宏大的风光，肯定是震撼的；另一方面，这无尽的寂寥，远离故土的思念，对胡人和战事的担忧，又会给心里蒙上凄凉的意境，纵然这首诗有着胜利的形象，但在这骄傲之下我却依然感受到了诗人传递的许多无奈。

如果他们不被国家政事困扰，没有”先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐”的节操，闲暇之时游山玩水，来到这神妙无尽，寂静无边，震天撼地的广袤草原上，到底能给我们写下多少美好的诗歌？我想，李白之所以是李白，与他年少时四处游荡，从西到东的游历关系甚大，只有见过大场面的人才有无尽的想象力和超脱的人格品味，正是”人生得意须尽欢,莫使金樽空对月”，能有这种气度，不容易，我已经很多年没见到这种人了，愈发自感孤独。