CHINESE POETRY AND ITS CONNOTATIONS 105 



capital of United China by him; so near do the two sites 

 lie, in fact, that the poets seem to use the names almost 

 interchangeably. 



To the south of Ch'ang An, (the present Hsi An-fu in 

 Shensi) lay Ssu Chilian that province of marvellous scenery, 

 where the mountains, which are really the foot-hills of 

 Tibet, pile themselves up tier upon tier. One range known 

 as the Mountains of the Two-edged Sword was, and is, 

 especially famous; it formed an almost impassable barrier- 

 between the provinces, the great Chu Ko-liang, therefore, 

 ordered that a road-way of the kind generally known as 

 Chan Tao $8 it (that is one made of logs laid on piers 

 which are driven into the face of a cliff and kept secure by 

 mortar) be built, so that travellers from Shensi might be able 

 to penetrate the heart of Ssu Ch'iian. This roadway is des- 

 cribed by Li T'ai-po in a very beautiful "T'zu" M. "The 

 Roadway of the Two-Edged Sword." In Ssu Ch'iian, too, 

 lay the district of Pa EL where the "Serpent River" wound 

 its way through deep ravines; to the south again rolled the 

 great Yang Tzu W; •?*, Son of the Sea, with its famous Gorges, 

 among others the San Hsia H'W, Three Chasms, which the 

 poets never tire of referring to, they "press green Heaven" 

 to use the words of Li Po. 



Among these scenes the poets lived and sang and it is 

 not strange that a very special phraseology with very definite- 

 connotations should have grown up. The picture of a 

 cavalcade of travellers crossing a mountain pass will, if com- 

 pared with the key, give an idea of what was in the poet's 

 mind, when for instance he spoke of a "flying spring" ?fe & 

 or a "suspended precipice" J® H. If these, however, were 

 the scenes in the poet's mind when he wrote of Ssu Ch'iian 

 how very different w T ere those which flashed before his mental 

 eyes when his thoughts followed the soldiers to the far north- 

 west ! ! — to the country where the Hsiung Nu / feO tZ and other 

 Mongol tribes lived — those Barbarians, as the Chinese called 

 them, who perpetually desired that their horses should "drink 

 of the streams of the South" — who have harrassed the 

 Chinese Empire since its earliest days. As a defence against 

 them the "First Emperor" erected the Wall which runs for 

 10,000 li, which, however, could only palliate, not cure the 

 evil; only constant effort, constant fighting, could prevent 

 the Mongol hordes from over-running the country. 



Beyond the "Jade Pass" 3£ 13 in Kansu, through which 

 the soldiers marched, lay the desert and the steppes stretch- 

 ing to the very edge of Heaven, and on the "Edge of 

 Heaven" stood the "Heaven -high Hills," while on the way 

 surrounded by miles of sand, lay the Ching Hai W & the- 

 Green Sea. A dreary region at best, and peopled by the 

 ghosts of countless soldiers who had fallen in battle. 



