The Han Dynasty descended to the Baideng Road, and the Hu took a peek at the Qinghai Bay.
The original text comes from
Guan Shanyue
Tang Dynasty: Li Bai
The bright moon rises above the Tianshan Mountains, among the vast sea of ??clouds.
The wind blows tens of thousands of miles across Yumen Pass.
The Han Dynasty descended to the Baideng Road, and the Hu took a peek at the Qinghai Bay.
The land was conquered, but no one returned.
The garrison guests looked at the border towns, thinking about returning home with many sad faces.
The tall building is like this night, and I have no time to sigh.
Translation
A bright moon rises from the Qilian Mountains and passes through the vast sea of ??clouds.
The mighty long wind blew tens of thousands of miles and passed Yumen Pass where the soldiers were stationed.
Back then, Han soldiers were targeting the Baishan Mountain Road, while Tubo coveted large areas of rivers and mountains in Qinghai.
This is the place where battles have been fought throughout the ages, and few soldiers who went to battle survived.
The garrison soldiers looked at the scene of the border town in the distance, thinking about returning to their hometown and couldn't help but look sad.
Appreciation
This poem depicts the scenery of the frontier fortress, the experiences of the garrison soldiers, and goes deeper into the pain of lovesickness between the garrison soldiers and their missing wives. The descriptions at the beginning are all for rendering and foreshadowing the rest, focusing on the emotions caused by looking at the moon.
The first four sentences can be said to be a vast frontier picture including the three elements of pass, mountain and moon. In general literary works, descriptions such as "the moon rises over the East China Sea" or "the moon rises over the East Mountains" are common. Tianshan Mountain is in western China and seems to be the place where the moon sets. Why do we say "the moon rises over the Tianshan Mountains"? It turns out this is from the recruitment perspective. The soldiers were stationed in the west of the Tianshan Mountains. Looking back to the east, they saw the bright moon rising from the Tianshan Mountains. Although Tianshan Mountain is not close to the sea, there is a sea of ??clouds that stretches across the mountain. The poet combines the vast scene of clouds and moons, which seems to be more common only over the sea in people's minds, with the majestic Tianshan Mountains, making it appear fresh and spectacular. Such a state may be difficult to maintain in front of ordinary poets with weak talents, but Li Bai has great writing power. The next sentence "The wind blows tens of thousands of miles and blows across Yumen Pass", the scope is wider than the previous two sentences. Yang Qixian of the Song Dynasty seemed to be afraid of problems with the "tens of thousands of miles". He said: "The distance from Tianshan Mountain to Yumen Pass is not too far, and when it comes to tens of thousands of miles, the moon is like going out of the ears of Tianshan Mountain, not the Tianshan Mountains." It seems safe to explain "tens of thousands of miles" by imagining the distance between the bright moon and Yumen Pass, but Li Bai was talking about the length of the "long wind" and did not mention the distance between the bright moon and the earth. In fact, these two sentences are still spoken from the perspective of the garrison. The soldiers were in the northwest frontier. When they stood in the moonlight and looked at their hometown, they felt that the wind was so powerful that it seemed to have swept through tens of thousands of miles of the Central Plains and came across the Yumen Pass. . The meaning of the poem will become clearer if we understand it in conjunction with "The autumn wind never blows away, but there is always love between jade and love" in Li Bai's "Midnight Wu Song". In this way, together with the above description, it is characterized by Changfeng, Mingyue, Tianshan Mountain and Yumenguan, forming a picture of the frontier fortress thousands of miles away. On the surface, it seems to only describe natural scenes, but as long as you put yourself in the situation and understand what Zhengren is seeing when he looks east, it is easy to feel the nostalgia for the hometown.
"The Han descended to Baideng Road, and Hu glanced at Qinghai Bay. No one has returned to the place where the battle came from." This is a scene of the battle superimposed on the vast natural scene of the frontier fortress in the first four sentences. Liu Bang, the emperor of the Han Dynasty, was besieged by the Xiongnu on Baishan Mountain for seven days. The Qinghai Bay area was the place where the Tang army and Tubo fought for many years. This kind of endless war throughout the ages has made it difficult for soldiers who have ever gone to war to return home alive. These four sentences serve as a link between the previous and the following in terms of structure. The object of description transitions from the frontier fortress to the war, and from the war to the garrison.
"The garrisonmen looked at the border towns, thinking of returning home with many sad faces. The tall buildings were standing there tonight, and they sighed." The soldiers looked at the scenes on the border and missed their hometown, with sad expressions on their faces. Due to the color, they imagined that their wives on the high-rise building would never stop sighing on this vast moonlit night. The three words "looking at the border" seem to be written carelessly in Li Bai's pen, but they closely connect the above picture of the thousands-mile frontier fortress and the scene of the battle with the "garrison". The sights we see are like this, and our thoughts are naturally vast and distant. The sentiments and sighs imagined by the soldiers as they missed their wives in high-rise buildings seemed particularly profound against such a broad background.
At this time, the soldier's wife was in the high building, lamenting when she would be able to see her relatives far away.
Reference materials
Ancient poetry website: http://so.gushiwen.org/view_7741.aspx