The poem describes the cold conditions in the north. The sky in the north is so cold and dark, even the other three directions are reflected in a mysterious purple, giving people a sense of oppression. The weather was so cold that the thousands-mile-long Yellow River was frozen into a large block. Vehicles weighing 10,000 kilograms could run back and forth on it. The fish and dragons underwater were probably frozen to death. The three-foot-thick bark was cracked, and it could not withstand the severe cold. The thick fog obscured the sky so tightly that even a knife couldn't penetrate it. The ice flowers condensed on the grass and trees are as big as copper coins. There are also many ice cubes in the sea water, which collide and stir in the turbulent waves, making crisp sounds. The waterfalls in the mountains froze into white rainbows, hanging silently high in the sky. Although there are many words that praise imagination in the poem, it should also be written through personal experience or after traveling north to Luzhou. The so-called "death" and other words are only used to describe the strange cold state, and may not be related to state affairs or the poet's own situation and mood.
The first sentence "One side is dark and the other side is purple" always describes the feeling of gloomy sky in Beizhong. The world is divided into four directions: east, south, west and north, and the dim sky in the north actually reflects the sky in the other three directions into purple. The poet uses the word "black" to point out the meaning of cold winter, and outlines the theme, setting the tone of the cold winter for the whole poem. The remaining seven sentences are written in separate sentences. Except for the third sentence, the poet chooses things related to water, using water to condense into fog, frost, and ice when it encounters cold to highlight the coldness of Beizhong. The ground is so cold that the Yellow River is frozen, and the bark of three-foot-thick trees has been cracked by the freeze. The river water has frozen into a solid ice surface that can pass a car carrying a hundred kilograms of stone. The frost flowers that fall on the withered grass are as big as copper coins. The fog was so thick that it was impossible to cut with a knife; huge ice cubes floated on the sea, and the rushing water of the waterfall stopped and froze into a jade belt hanging in the mountains.
Mists and frost, frozen rivers, floating ice on the sea surface, frozen waterfalls, the world is filled with biting cold air. There is no direct word "cold" but it makes people feel chilly. If you read it carefully, you will find that many of the descriptions are beyond common sense but unique. For example, the word "death" in "Yellow River ice combines with fish and dragons to die" means that the river freezes in winter, fish sink under the ice, and the silence of the ice surface is very vivid. "Death" does not describe fish and dragons. "Death" refers to the silence of winter; another example is the sentence "wielding a knife but not entering the foggy sky" expresses the mist-filled scene in Beizhong in an extremely exaggerated way.
Planning the layout and finding management in the chaos is a distinctive feature of this poem. There is no plot throughout the whole poem, and there is not even a flow of time. It is all connected by fragments of scenery. However, poets also have ingenuity. In the description of the scene in the whole poem, the first sentence outlines the point. Although there is no obvious logical connection between the following sentences, except for "Three feet of wood peeling off Wenli", they all describe the various wonders caused by the changes in hydrology between heaven and earth, and this is the characteristic of a world ruled by severe cold. These landscape sequences include the frozen Yellow River and driving on the river, huge frost flowers, thick fog, ocean filled with ice floes, frozen waterfalls, etc. They are both real and combined with the poet's strange imagination. This brings readers into a strange world of ice and snow. The sky is dark and the ground is bright, like a mysterious crystal kingdom. People will feel cold, but also feel surprised and happy a hundred times more than the cold.
The choice of words and metaphors, and the uniqueness of the unreasonable are another significant feature of this poem. If readers stick to common sense, natural common sense and grammatical common sense, then they will "revise" the poems in "Bei Zhonghan" one by one: When the ice in the Yellow River is in season, fish and dragons should dive to the bottom. It makes no sense to say "the fish and the dragon died". "The Book of Han" says that "the land of raccoon dogs, where there is accumulation of shade, has three inches of wood bark", not "three feet"; it means "a heavy cart with a hundred stones", not a "strong cart"; it means "going up the ice of the river", not "going up the river water" ;Milu can be said to be difficult to break with a knife, but it does not mean that it is "inaccessible". However, all these violations of convention, whether in terms of theory or wording, contain original ingenuity and win by surprise. "The death of fish and dragon" means that the entire river is frozen, emphasizing the unusual coldness, which is unreasonable and interesting. The "water" in "Baishi Qiang's Carriage on the River" is "ice", but using the word "water" has achieved an amazing effect. Although "drawing a knife to cut off the water, the water will flow again" is more common sense, but "wielding a knife to stop the sky" has a different sense of magic, which shows that the fog in the northern country is particularly dense. A rainbow originally has seven colors, and the word "Jade Rainbow" emphasizes the transparency of the frozen waterfall, and the transparency can also reflect different colors of light, giving readers a very strange sense of language.