Early Medieval China 13–14.

2 (2008) 87

THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR IN EARLY MEDIEVAL CHINA,

EXAMINED THROUGH THE “NORTHERN YUEFU”

Scott Pearce
Western Washington University

Introduction
Despite the notion of the noble savage, war has pervaded
human life for a very long time. 1 And it has existed within all
major societies including, of course, China. But having accepted
the strong tendency of men to kill each other, it is useful to give
thought to the differences between societies. Who has been doing
the fighting? How have war and the fighting man been viewed and
portrayed? And who has written the books in which these
portrayals have been presented? Violence and violent domination
have flourished as themes in China’s popular fora—the romance
novel, the kungfu movie. But the Chinese literary elite, particularly
in the last thousand years, has tended to downplay, mask, or
caricaturize these central elements of human life and human
nature.2 In this very preliminary study I focus on China’s Northern
Dynasties, when war and the warrior were, by some at least, more
openly exalted.
Although military traditions in China stretch back to the
Bronze Age, the starting point for this study will be the Han
dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) which, building on the Qin, established
a new model of empire and of army. The military traditions of Han

1
Though precisely when this begins does, of course, depend upon how we
define “war”: for one definition, and at times startling descriptions, see Jean
Guilaine and Jean Zammit, The Origins of War: Violence in Prehistory (Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2005).
2
See, for instance, the discussion of how this occurred in the art of painting,
in James Cahill, The Painter’s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in
Traditional China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 115–23.
88 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

took full form with Wudi (the “martial emperor”), his blood-
sweating horses and imperialistic expansion. Armies could no
longer be constructed out of peasant boys alone. These traditions
of bellicosity began to grow in earnest during the Later Han, with
abolition of universal conscription and the establishment of
specialized military groups.3 Though it emerged within the empire,
this military tradition drew from the beginning on cultural
elements of the empire’s hinterland, peripheral sub-cultures that
came to play a greater and greater part in war and the military.4
Followers of Cao Cao in the third century, barbarians became lords
themselves in the fourth, constructing—to borrow a phrase from
the Europeanist Walter Pohl—“kingdoms within the empire.”
Their power was, in the beginning at least, largely based on the
organization of armies. But so, for that matter, had been the power
of the Cao or Sima. And despite the important role of nomad or
highlander, this military tradition was not the possession of any
one group—it was by nature malleable, and extendable. In the
particular form that this cultural model took in the Wei River
Valley, in the sixth and seventh centuries, it served as basis for the
recreation of empire in the Chinese lands.
This paper has modest ambitions. I make no attempt here to
give a complex overview of medieval Chinese military traditions
in their entirety. My wish is to see if I can find a few forms of
“self-announcement” by fighting men during this age, 5 and so
3
See Mark Lewis, “The Han Abolition of Universal Military Service,” in
Warfare in Chinese History, ed. Hans van de Ven (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 33–76;
for an anthropological approach to a particular militaristic tradition, see Emilio
Willems, A Way of Life and Death: Three Centuries of Prussian-German
Militarism, An Anthropological Approach (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University
Press, 1986), 3.
4
See discussion of this issue in Thomas Abler, Hinterland Warriors and
Military Dress: European Empires and Exotic Uniforms (Oxford and New York:
Berg, 1999). This drawing from the periphery is, of course, not at all unique to
China or East Asia, but a worldwide phenomenon, as seen for instance in the last
500 years of involvement of an originally peripheral Europe with the larger
world.
5
For other forms of self-announcement during this age, see Dorothy C.
Wong, “Ethnicity and Identity: Northern Nomads as Buddhist Art Patrons
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 89

move beyond the black beans of text to catch a more authentic

glimpse of key figures in early medieval China, such as Hou Jing
or Yuwen Tai. This is, of course, an issue in all of history—
modern as well as pre-modern, and the historian can never entirely
succeed, since human beings seem always to have had a tendency
to caricaturize both the self and the other. What is particularly
frustrating in looking at the non-Chinese in early medieval China,
however, is the existence of multiple veils between beholder and
beheld. Yuwen Tai’s mother tongue is entirely lost. When we read
a speech, replete with numerous classical Chinese references, that
was supposedly given by that charismatic man to the tiny,
imperiled band of Särbi (Xianbei) warriors he led into Guanzhong,
we get no real sense of the fellow, or his ties with the men who
accompanied him. These men have been embedded—have embedded
themselves—within an empire of the text that they wished to rule, but
which conceals as much as it reveals of what they really were in the
world. What I seek in medieval China is an equivalent of the
graffiti left on Roman walls which, for all its crudity, is unarguable:
“Crescens the net fighter holds the hearts of all the girls.”
An unfortunate truth must at this point, however, be made clear
to the reader. The paean to Crescen was taken from the wall of his
gladiatorial academy; it’s hard to argue with. The “Folk Songs of
the Northern Dynasties” (beichao yuefu 北朝樂府), on the other
hand, embedded in multiple textual traditions, are of far less
certain origin. While some of these poems—or at least bits and
pieces of them—may originally have taken shape in the north,
what we now possess of the “northern folk songs” were gathered
together into A Record of Music Past and Present (Gujin yuelu 古
今樂錄), compiled in the south by the Chen monk Zhijiang 智匠 (fl.
ca. 568). 6 Zhijiang’s work has been lost; what remains of his

during the Period of Northern and Southern Dynasties,” in Political Frontiers,

Ethnic Boundaries, and Human Geographies in Chinese History, ed. Nicola Di
Cosmo and Don J. Wyatt (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, Taylor &
Francis Group, 2003), 84.
6
See comments on Zhijiang and Gu Jin yuelu in Tian Xiaofei, Beacon Fire
and Shooting Star: The Literary Culture of the Liang (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Asia Center Press, 2007), 335. Professor Tian has also given me various helpful
90 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

collection is found only in the much later, Song period Yuefu shiji
樂府詩集 of Guo Maoqian 郭茂倩 (fl. late 11th century).7
But all is not lost. During this period ideas, symbols, and
people moved constantly back and forth across the ever permeable
boundary lines of political regimes. Among these roving notions
were elements of a tradition of militarism, which though
conventionally associated with the nomad warrior, migrated among
several different sub-cultures of this age—within the north, and
then down to the south—combining and recombining within larger
cultural frameworks. And many of the symbols we find in the
south in the so-called “northern songs” make appearance, as we
shall see below, in other contemporary sources describing the
militarized northern societies, and indeed in other militarized
societies in other parts of the world. We will not in these pieces
truly encounter a Crescen—or the crude but unarguable thought
and feeling of Yuwen Tai and his comrades. But we can explore a
set of floating symbols that informed martial mindsets in many
districts within the Chinese territories, some of which also
certainly came from the north.

Background Issues
War songs—from which the northern yuefu are said to
derive—are widespread in human history, serving both to stir and
to organize fighting men. They come, we are told by David Murray
in his Music of the Scottish Regiments, “from the demands of war
itself,” as brought to life in this old Scots song:
Dumbarton’s drums beat bonny, O,
And I’ll leave a’ my freens and my Nancy, O,

suggestions and criticisms for this paper through personal communication. For a
discussion of mythmaking surrounding yuefu under the First Empire, see Anne
M. Birrell, “Mythmaking and Yüeh-fu: Popular Song and Ballads of Early Imperial
China,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 109.2 (1989): 223–35.
7
In this paper, I have used the Beijing, Zhonghua shuju edition (4 vols.),
1979.
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 91

And I’ll bide nae mair at hame, but I’ll follow wi’ the drum,
And whene’er it shall sound, I’ll be ready, O.8

The war song La guerre of the sixteenth century French

composer Clément Janequin evoked “the canter of heavy steeds
charging into battle,” its lyrics exhorting the noble to “jump into
the saddle, buckle your arms... lance at the ready, bold and quick.”
Hearing this song, we are told, “there was not a man who did not
look to see if his sword was safe in its scabbard and who did not
stand on his toes to look braver and taller.”9 Closer to home, Xunzi
tells us that when a man “takes up the shield and battle-ax, and
learns the postures of the war-dance, his bearing acquires vigor and
majesty.”10 The importance of war songs in the Northern Dynasties
is averred in a story in the Northern Wei Record of the Buddhist
Monasteries of Luoyang (Luoyang qielan ji), in which we are told
of “Tian Sengchao, a virtuoso of the pipe who could play the
‘Song of the Warrior,’ and the ‘Lament of Xiang Yu.’ Cui Yanbo,
the General to Conquer the West, was a great admirer of his...
Whenter he was about to join battle he ordered Tian Sengchao to
play the ‘Song of the Warrior,’ arousing the armoured soldiers to a
high pitch of excitement... For two years [524–25] he won a string
of victories until [Cui’s opponent] Moqi Chounu recruited some
first-rate archers to shoot Tian Sengchao.”11
Military music was clearly important in early medieval China,
and as Albert Dien has described, frequently of non-Chinese
origin.12 Joseph Allen, on the other hand, in his study of the yuefu
8
David Murray, Music of the Scottish Regiments (Edinburgh: Murray Press,
2001), 1, 3.
9
Kate Van Orden, Music, Discipline and Arms in Early Modern France
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005), 24, 26.
10
Burton Watson, trans., Hsün Tzu: Basic Writings (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1963), 113.
11
Trans. W. J. F. Jenner, Memories of Luoyang: Yang Hsüan-chih and the Lost
Capital (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 237–8, with changes in transcription; cited
in Albert E. Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2007), 351–2.
12
Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization, Chapter 11, “Music and Musical
Instruments.”
92 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

as they emerged in the south into the forms that we now have of
them, has raised doubts regarding the “assumed musicality of the
yuefu poetry.”13 His suggestion is affirmed by an examination of
Guo’s Song period Yuefu shiji, which frequently states that what is
on the page is “song lyric” 歌辭, with no melody behind it. And a
quick look will suffice to tell us that the lyrics of many of these
songs—even those that may have originated up north, in non-
Chinese languages—were not something that would lead a man to
“follow wi’ the drum.”
The Jiu Tang shu “Treatise on Music” thus speaks of how in
Tang times “we have lost the actual” 失其真矣, perhaps referring
to melodies, or to the original lyrics, before translation, of that
small subset of songs that genuinely derived from non-Chinese
traditions.14 Earlier in this same passage, however, it is stated that
“what we know of the music of the northern barbarians was of the
three nations of the Särbi, the Tuyuhun (or Murong), and the
Buluoji (or Bulgars15); it was all horseback music. ‘Drum and fife
[one of the key categories of yuefu music]’ was originally played
on horseback, by skilled musicians in [Chinese] military units.
Thus, since the Han, northern barbarian music was all given over
to the Office of Drums and Fifes” (北狄樂: 其可知者鮮卑, 吐谷
渾, 部落稽三國, 皆馬上樂也. 鼓吹本軍旅知音, 馬上奏之. 故自
漢以來, 北狄樂總歸鼓吹署). 16 And to draw forth an historical
example, Cao Cao is said to have used the “barbarian winds” or
hengchui 橫吹¸ a type of mounted military band, in his campaigns
against the northeastern Wuwan nomads. 17 This consisted of a

13
Joseph Allen, In the Voice of Others: Chinese Music Bureau Poetry (Ann
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies, 1992), 46.
14
Jiu Tang shu 29.1072. All references to dynastic histories are to the
Beijing, Zhonghua shuju edition.
15
For this association, see Peter A. Boodberg, “Two Notes on the History of
the Chinese Frontier,” HJAS 1 (1936); rpt. in Selected Works of Peter A.
Boodberg (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979),
248–64.
16
Jiu Tang shu 29.1071.
17
Mentioned in discussion of this topic by Tan Runsheng 譚潤生, Beichao
min’ge 北朝民歌 (Taibei: Sanmin shuju, 1997), 49 ff.
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 93

drum and a “barbarian horn” (hujiao 胡角); at this time, more and
more foreign instruments were coming into use in the decaying
first empire.18 Such military bands, as we shall see, continued to
perform in both the north and south throughout the early medieval
period.
Joseph Allen is, however quite right to cast doubt on the
relationship between these songs and the yuefu. The latter are not
simply non-Chinese “barbarian music”; like Yuwen Tai and Hou
Jing, they have been brought into and digested by the Chinese
literary tradition. And this had begun to occur long before the fifth
century. Thus, in the passage quoted above, Jiu Tang shu tells us
that “since the Han, northern barbarian music was all given over to
the ‘Drum and Fife [Music] Office’.” 19 Both Allen and Tian
Xiaofei quite rightly examine yuefu from within the highly
developed southern poetic traditions.
As mentioned above, however, the aim of this article is not to
examine these texts from within that southern poetic tradition, but
attempt to find what we can in them that describes the culture or
cultures of war that existed in early medieval China. Such cultures
certainly did exist in the south, as will be clearly demonstrated in
Andrew Chittick’s forthcoming book.20 But in the opinion of this
author, it did exist in a more extensive and purposefully
constructed form in the north; the “mannered machismo” 21 of
many in that region did not derive simply from caricatures painted
by southern versifiers, but from the existence there of militarized
“nations,” centered first on Pingcheng and then later Taiyuan and
particularly Chang’an, whose cultural construction drew upon

18
See Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization, for specific information on military
bands and their use in processions, funerals, etc., 350–1; and for information on
other instruments of the time, 342–3. And see also the descriptions given in the
much later Xin Tang shu 23B.508–9.
19
Jiu Tang shu 29.1071; and Tan, Beichao min’ge, 51.
20
Andrew Chittick, Patronage and Community in Medieval China: The
Xiangyang Garrison, 400–600 CE (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
forthcoming).
21
Tian’s description of the poetry-created caricature of the northerner she
sets out to debunk in Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 335 ff.
94 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

Inner Asian traditions. Once again in this author’s opinion, while

such cultural forms were present in the south, they were
purposefully suppressed by conquerors such as Liang Wudi, who
used poetry among other things, to attenuate cultures of violence
that made his rule more difficult.
At least some of the elements of the northern militarized
culture derived, of course, from the steppe—from the Xiongnu and
later from the Särbi regimes that took shape in the third and fourth
centuries in the frontier regions. And these do, in fact, go back
even further. King Wuling of the Zhao (325–299 BC), for instance,
is known for borrowing the garb and style of the northern
horseman, and it might be fair to wonder if he did not in fact only
borrow such things, but actually brought northern horsemen into
his army as well, much as European powers to the west first
recruited the Hungarian Hussar (light cavalry) into their armies,
and then themselves began to don the garb of their foreign
horsemen.22 It is certainly to be noted that first the Qin and then the
Han drew heavily for their armies upon the populations north and
west of the Wei River Valley, regions that in later times are
conspicuously peppered with non-Chinese peoples.23
Thus we must make here two superficially contradictory
statements. First, long before the rise of the barbarian kingdoms in
the early centuries AD, there did exist a distinct martial culture of
the first empire, characterized by adoration of the horse, esteem for
the bravo, and other features that clearly reappear in the northern
songs, and elsewhere. At the same time, long before the early
medieval age (and long afterwards as well, as we see in the case of
Roxanne the Sogdian, a.k.a., An Lushan) the military of what we
call the “Chinese” empire—as, of course, the empire itself—was a
complex entity, deeply interlarded with groups and individuals
who did not belong to the dominant language family. And from the
time of the first empire, if not before, these peripheral populations

22
Abler, Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress, 24 ff.
23
See, for instance, the discussion of the mixed nature of Dong Zhuo’s
army, in Lewis, “Han abolition of universal military service,” 73.
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 95

exerted a strong influence upon military culture within China. 24

This is a model discussed at some length, in connection with the
British empire, in Thomas Abler’s Hinterland Warriors and
Military Dress. The difference in early medieval China, of course,
is that for a time at least, the hinterland managed to seize control of
the center.

Nature of the texts

“Folk Songs of the Northern Dynasties” is a slippery category,
since these are not necessarily either folk songs or from the
Northern Dynasties, or even from the north.25 As Tian Xiaofei has
described, what survives of these songs has been integrated into
the Yangtze literary tradition. And within that tradition, they are a
distinctly minor category. Of the pieces identified by Tan
Runsheng as “folk songs of the northern dynasties” (and there is
disagreement about this), there are just 79.26 All but one of them
are taken from Guo Maoqian’s Yuefu shiji.27 Guo drew heavily on
the Chen period Record of Music Past and Present. But as Joseph
Allen has discussed at some length, Guo moved within a very
different context during the Song period, assembling “folk songs”
of the Northern Dynasties within the context of an early modern
“folklore” movement. The interpretive dangers of such movements
in Europe and the United States in more recent time are well

24
See the statement of Yu Xu in AD 110 that the warrior traditions of the
western peoples were vital to the Han state, HHS 58:1866; cited in Lewis, “Han
Abolition of Universal Military Service,” 68.
25
See discussion in Tan, Beichao min’ge; Cao Daoheng 曹道衡, Nanbeichao
wenxue shi 南北朝文學史(Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1991), 452; and
Tian, Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 335–46. While preferring to view these
songs from within the arena of the southern poetical tradition, the subject of her
book, Tian still admits that “some of them might well have migrated from the
North” (336) and that “there are no definitive answers” (337).
26
Tan, Beichao min’ge, 77–8.
27
The lone song preserved outside of Yuefu shiji, a variant of Mulan, the
story of “Li Bo’s little sister,” is found in Bei shi 33.1224.
96 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

known. At one point, Allen suggests that the category yuefu itself
is an ex post facto concoction.28
Proceeding to examine the location of the northern folk songs
in Yuefu shiji, a large majority—and really all the pieces that may
in some sense derive ultimately from barbarian folk—are found in
a section called “Liang Gujiao hengchui qu” (“Liang Songs of
Drums and Fifes and Barbarian [lit. “traverse”] Winds”) 梁鼓角橫
吹曲.29 Tan Runsheng describes this genre as a complex assembly
of instruments and styles, containing both “Drum and Fife”
(Gujiao) music, combined with the “Barbarian Winds” (hengchui)
we have seen above.30
In general, the first thing mentioned by scholars turning to
examine the “Liang Songs of Drums and Fifes” is that this is a
complex category of “songs of mixed, ambiguous origins.”31 Some
of these were simply written in the south, while the original words
and/or music of others probably did come down from the north, to
be rewritten south of the Yangtze. In discussing this issue, Tian
Xiaofei suggests that earlier scholars—prominent among them Cao
Daoheng and Tan Runsheng—have too uncritically identified
songs as northern on the basis of some sort of simple, martial spirit,
in opposition to a “soft” south.32 This is a reasonable comment to

28
Allen, In the Voice of Others, Ch. 2.
29
Here I will employ Tian’s translation in Beacon Fire and Shooting Star,
335. A fuller translation would be “Liang Songs of Drums and Horns and
Barbarian [lit. ‘traverse’] Winds” (that is, fifes).
30
Tan, Beichao min’ge, 49. Tan suggests that this included the “barbarian
flute” 胡笛, a small traverse flute resembling the fife.
31
Tian, Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 344.
32
Ibid., 344–66 passim; see also Allen, In the Voice of Others, 142–5. Cao
Daoheng presented his view of the migration of songs to the south as follows: (1)
that some, at least, of the poems were originally composed in foreign tongues
without a writing system and passed on orally, a situation that still existed two
centuries later under the Tang, as we have seen described in the Jiu Tang shu
“Treatise on Music”; (2) that translation into Chinese began in the time of the
Northern Wei emperor Xiaowen (r. 471–499), in connection with his legally
enforced programs of cultural reform; and (3) that the poems were then taken
south, to be incorporated into the already fully extant yuefu tradition that existed
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 97

make, if for no other reason than that there was a great deal of
bloody warfare down south as well. But I would urge caution on
this new position as well, which in its own way becomes as
reflexive a mode of analysis as the flawed earlier patterns. First of
all, as identity psychology has examined from a variety of
approaches, whatever we really are, human beings do tend to
create shared images of themselves and their group, based around
shorthand sets of symbols, and most individuals will then attempt
to build themselves around those shared symbols of self and
group.33 It is on the basis of such cultural fabrications that human
beings have extended our forms of organization beyond the family
and the village to create imagined communities such as nations.
Though it may have been caricatured by poets in the south, the
image of the martial hinterland warrior was not created there;
whether fully or clearly presented in Yangtze verse, it took shape
in the Sixteen Kingdoms and Northern Dynasties.
Putting the Liang label in context—accepting both its
significance and its limitations, if we are interested in more than
the Liang—we need to restate and affirm the apparent diversity in
nature and origin among these songs. Some in fact were Liang
songs, miming the northern songs, or scavenging elements from
within them. Some may indeed have originated among the Särbi
folk in the north, and then undergone a complex process of
translation and transportation. Others of the northern songs were
certainly written in the north, but were authored in Chinese by
eminent individuals, such as the drinking song written by a “music
man of the Northern Wei Prince of Gaoyang,” who in 528 was
killed with thousands of other Luoyang courtiers in Erzhu Rong’s
Heyin massacre.34 Another such piece included by Tan among the
“northern songs” was “White Flower Yang,” written by Empress

there. Nanbeichao wenxue shi, 451–2. For a variant of this analysis, see Tan,
Beichao min’ge, 79–80.
33
See, for example, Phillip L. Hammack, “Narrative and the Cultural
Psychology of Identity,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 12 (2008):
222–47.
34
See Tian, Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 338; Tan, Beichao min’ge, 68;
Wei shu 21A.552–8, 10:256
98 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

Dowager Hu. Infatuated with the young man who gave title to her
song, she was devastated when, spurning her advances, White
Flower fled south to Jiankang (perhaps taking a northern song or
two on the road with him).35 One tragedy led to another: she too
died at the Heyin massacre.
Thus, I would suggest that the “northern songs” are neither full
and pure “songs of the northern barbarians,” nor did they exist
simply and solely within the elaborate and intertwined genealogy
of verse that emerged in the south. As was the case with so many
people at this time, the “Liang Songs of Drums and Fifes” was a
mix and a lumpy one at that. But resting on conjecture, plausible
arguments can be made of how, stretching across several traditions
and cultures, bits and pieces of them at least were used by different
groups in a variety of quite different ways.

Some Elements of the Image of the Warrior, Presented in the

“Northern Songs”36
As Xunzi said, “Music is joy, and in their hatred of disorder,
the former kings created musical forms” so that “the voice would
fully express the feelings of joy without becoming wild and
abandoned.” 37 On a more mundane level, it is used to express
desire, or disgruntlement, to advertise the self, or to incorporate the
individual into the shared rhythms of a larger group. As Xunzi
went on to say: “Music enters deeply into men and transforms
them rapidly.”38

35
Yang Baihua was a son of Northern Wei’s famous Qiang general, Yang
Dayan. See his biographies in Liang shu 39.556–7; Nan shi 63.1535; and the
discussion of this in Tian, Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 345–6; and Tan,
Beichao min’ge, 69–70. It should be noted that “White Flower Yang” was not
included in “Liang Songs of Drums and Fifes,” but was placed in a chapter of
miscellanea in Yuefu shiji 3: 73.1039–40.
36
It should be pointed out here that the rough organization of these pieces is
thematic. We cannot confidently put them in chronological order.
37
Burton Watson, trans., Hsün Tzu, 112.
38
Ibid.,114. A rich discussion of this subject was published in a recent
Economist article titled “Why Music?” (20 Dec. 2008).
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 99

All of these facets appear within the “northern songs,” which

contain a set of compelling symbols that appear in many warrior
traditions, and seem, in fact, to be tendencies of thought and
feeling deep within the human heart. If one wished, one could
certainly craft a comparison of the “Qiyu songs” (see just below)
with the “Song of Roland” (the worth of such a venture I will leave
to others). Some themes that are common world-wide do not figure
prominently in this set of poems, such as honor and fearlessness in
the face of death; we see no early version of seppuku in these
pieces. What does leap out to us are pride as exemplified in the
weapon and the horse.
The dominance of the alpha male (or for that matter, the alpha
female) is fundamental to our species, and to the mammal class in
general. Through much of the history of the human species, this
has manifested itself in the pride of the warrior, and in the legends
built around these individuals – Achilles, or Beowulf, or Saladin.
This theme leaps out at us in the very first poem presented in Guo
Maoqian’s collection, the first of four of the opening set in “Liang
Songs of Drums and Horns and Traverse Winds,” the “Qiyu
songs.” The piece reeks of that timeless and deeply male theme,
the strut and swagger:
A man should act with daring;
link up with some chums—you won’t need many.
The hawk goes flying through the sky,
39
sparrows scatter on either side.
男兒欲作健
結伴不須多
鷂子經天飛
群雀兩向波

The poems in the Qiyu set are among those most clearly of
ultimate non-Chinese origin; the meaning of the set’s name,
“Qiyu” 企喻, is itself unclear. Presumably it is a transcription of a

39
Yuefu shiji 2: 25.363. I have drawn upon the translation by Stephen Owen,
An Anthologyof Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (New York and London:
W.W. Norton, 1996), 240, with alterations.
100 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

term from a non-Chinese language. In the Chen monk’s Record of

Music Past and Present, it is suggested that at least one of the
poems belonged to Fu Rong, the younger son of Fu Jian of the
Former Qin (350–394), who lost the famous (and contested) battle
at Feishui. On this basis, Tan Runsheng suggests that this set
derived from among the Di people in the late fourth century, and
that in the next century it was among the pieces gathered by the
Northern Wei Music Bureau and translated into Särbi, then later
translated under Xiaowen into Chinese.40 If this is true, and not all
agree, then Qiyu is a Chinese transcription of either the Di
language or Särbi.41
My next choice is a poem that takes one aback:
I just bought a five-foot sword,
from the central pillar I hang it.
I stroke it three times a day—
42
better by far than a maid of fifteen.
新買五尺刀
懸著中梁柱
一日三摩娑
劇於十五女

This phallic ode is drawn from “Song Lyrics of the Langye wang”
琅琊王歌辭, the second set in the “Liang Songs of Drums and
Horns and Traverse Winds.” Once again, origin is uncertain. Tan
Runsheng suggests they were composed under the Northern Qi
regime, by members of the Gao royal house (whom we shall
discuss in more detail below), while Tian Xiaofei, with her focus
on the southern traditions, suggests that these are songs of the
southern expatriate Wang lineage, who had originally come from
Langye in the north.43

40
Yuefu shiji 2: 25.363; Tan, Beichao min’ge, 54–5. Fu Rong’s life is
contained in Jin shu 114.2933–6.
41
Reservations on these theories are put forth by Tian, Beacon Fire and
Shooting Star, 338–9.
42
Yuefu shiji 2: 25.364; Translated by Owen, Anthology, 241.
43
Tan, Beichao min’ge, 55–6; Tian, Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 340.
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 101

At any rate, in a fine analysis, Tan goes on to point out that

embedded in the text is the intertwining of two key symbols – the
sword as phallic symbol and sexual conquest, a prevalent theme in
many societies. This is a symbol seen in militarized societies in
many times and many places. Beginning with examples from the
European neolithic, brought forth by Jean Guilaine and Jean
Zammit in their Origins of War, we find “masculine menhir”
depicting a “‘hero’ wearing a necklace and holding three halberds,
three axes, seven daggers, and an object which resembles a battle
axe. Other monuments depict the relationship between weapons
and the sun.” 44 Discussing related rupestrian engravings depicting
daggers, the authors go on to assert that these “served to establish
an individual’s ‘citizenship’…The overriding theme in these
scenes is male superiority…Women are absent….”45 Many other
examples could, of course, be found, which are not simply poets’
caricatures: the use of the sword in the rituals of European
knighting, the cult of the sword in samurai Japan, or for that matter
the gun on the rack in the pick-up truck of many males of the
American interior.
The horse is another profound symbol of power, which has in
many societies been both substance and symbol of the warrior’s
way. Han Wudi ached for a heavenly horse; the Northern Wei
emperor Taiwu, perhaps half in jest, at one point suggested
clearing the farmlands of northern China to create a vast pasture
there. The tradition carried on for another thousand years, as we
see in the paintings of Giuseppe Castiglione and his painting for
the Manchu court. 46 The modern is reminded of this when
encountering the mounted police. Within this world view, as in the
myth of the centaur, the hero’s body merges with his spirited steed:

44
Tan, Beichao min’ge, 121ff. Guilaine and Zammit, Origin of War, 184.
These comments depict the menhir shown in plate 22, p.186; see also figure 48,
p.177, figure 51, p.185.
45
Ibid.,182.
46
In connection with China, see Robert E. Harrist, Jr., Power and Virtue:
the Horse in Chinese Art (New York: China Institute Gallery, 1997).
102 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

A hero needs a horse that’s swift of foot,

And a horse swift of foot needs have a hero.
As hooves go thundering through the yellow dust,
47
I shall soon know who was the victor.
健兒須快馬
快馬須健兒
足必 跋黃塵下
然後別雄雌

Drawn from “Song Lyrics for Breaking off Weeping Willows” 折

楊柳歌辭, this quite famous piece, consciously or not, is embedded
in what Joseph Allen calls a “matrix of convention” that grew up in
the south and stretches back to the Han. In it, according to Tan, we
see a combination of the feelings of the northerner with the Tang
five-syllable quatrain. 48 Still far from the steppe, but perhaps a
half-step closer, is another piece from the Langye wang pieces:
A fast horse, with a high braided mane,
I imagine that his body is a dragon.
Who can ride this horse?
49
Only the Duke of Guangping.
懀馬高纏鬃
遙知身是龍
誰能騎此馬
唯有廣平王

Tan makes the suggestion that the Duke of Guangping was a

distant relation of Gao Huan, the founder of Eastern Wei-Northern
Qi, and great-grand-uncle of the Qi Prince of Langye, Gao Yan, a
rival for the throne in the midst of the bitter court disputes that
plagued Northern Qi in its last years.50 In both of these pieces, we

47
Yuefu shiji 2: 25.370; trans. J. D. Frodsham, Anthology of Chinese Verse
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 108.
48
See Tan, Beichao min’ge, 65; and the discussion of the willow motif in
Allen, In the Voice of Others, Chapter. 5.
49
Yuefu shiji 2: 25.364; Tan, Beichao min’ge, 221–2.
50
Bei shi 52.1889–92; and see Jennifer Holmgren, “Politics of the Inner
Court under the Hou-chu of Northern Ch’i,” in State and Society in Early
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 103

see the notion of the charismatic war leader, reminiscent as much

of war parties on the steppe as of the local bravos of the Han
period.
Various prominent themes have been left out of this small
selection of pieces, from the tiny corpus at our disposal. Prominent
(and much discussed) topoi that are here neglected would include
the cavalryman departing from his love (perhaps with the idea, in
the back of his mind, of what he can get with that sword, down the
road), and generally more poignantly, the grief of the woman he
leaves behind (quite reminiscent of various much more recent
songs from the British Isles, such as the well-known “The Water is
Wide”). Also of interest are “Mulan” and other such pieces,
dealing with women who had joined the male warrior fraternity.51
Other pieces, quite well known, deal with the hardships of war, or
poverty in general.
Here, however—at the end as at the beginning—we will focus
on a song exalting the “way of the warrior.” Qiyu piece #3 goes
beyond the bravado of the individual to describe an assembly of
such individuals into an army on the march; a vast and well-oiled
machine, moving relentlessly on towards its prey. It is all the more
frustrating that here we have no real certainty of whose army this is
describing:

The rows in front look back at the rows behind;

Uniformly arrayed in iron liangdang armor.52

Medieval China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 269–330. Tian,

Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 339, seems to accept that this “Duke of
Guangping” was a northerner, while expressing uncertainty about theories of
exactly which Duke of Guangping it was.
51
Again, examples of this appear in many societies. One example, from
Guilaine and Zammit, Origins of War, 182, depicts a woman in the rupestrian
drawings taking on the role of the dominant male by placing on her head 2 horns,
another symbol of the male.
52
On liangdang 裲襠 armor and other features of Northern Dynasty arms
and armor, see Liu Yonghua 劉永華, Zhongguo gudai junrong fushi 中國古代
軍戎服飾 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2003), 62–74; and Yang Hong,
ed., Weapons in Ancient China (Beijing: Science Press, 1992), 239.
104 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

The line’s front looks back to the rear;

53
Uniformly arrayed in iron helms.
前行看後行
齊著鐵裲襠
前頭看後頭
齊著鐵 金互 鉾

Boundary Jumping
At this point it is necessary to look at how songs took shape in
the north and then crossed the border south, even if we cannot be
sure that the Qiyu or other “Liang songs” derive from such pieces.
According to the Suishu “Treatise on Music,” the Northern Wei
collection of music—along with instruments and musicians—got
off to a bad start. 54 Having routed the Murong in 397, the Wei
founder Daowudi (“the emperor who makes a way of war”; r. 386–
409) “got hold of musical instruments from the Jin, but didn’t
know to make use of them and cast them aside.” Things grew more
systematic under Taiwu (r. 423–452), who made active efforts to
collect and preserve instruments, music and musicians taken in his
wars of conquest—such as the taking of the Ordos from Helian
Bobo, and the Gansu corridor from the Juqu clan—as well as
seizures made in victories over the new steppe power, the
Rouran. 55 The case of the music of the Juqu (whose ancestry
stretched back to the Xiongnu) is interesting here, since Suishu
suggests that the music of the Fu clan of Former Qin had been
transported up the Gansu corridor; 56 if the Qiyu odes are of Di
origin, this is perhaps the way they subsequently made their way
up to Taiwu’s capital at Pingcheng (mod. Taiyuan). The pieces
created or adapted at the Music Bureau were called the “Dai Songs
of the True Man” 真 人 代 歌 , in reference to the Daoist cult

53
Yuefu shiji 2: 25.363. This piece is discussed at great length in Tan,
Beichao min’ge, 165–6.
54
Sui shu 14.313.
55
Wei shu 109.2828, 102.2269.
56
Sui shu 14.313.
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 105

sponsored by Taiwu. Sung in the palace day and night, they

described the great deeds of the ancestral founders, as well as
events of more recent reigns.57
A generation later, under Xiaowen (471–499), we see that
emperor’s well-known efforts to “civilize” and “cultivate” his
people, along his vision of the old empire. Some, however, felt that
the “Filial and Cultivated Emperor” had gone too far—these
reforms were the beginning of “culture wars” that would spill over
into the sixth century. Already in the reign of his successor
Xuanwudi (“the proclaiming war emperor”; r. 499–515) we see
grumbling about the need for an ongoing mixture of wen and wu.58
In or around 533, several years after the Heyin massacre and in the
midst of the short–lived metropolis’ last gasp, Luoyang officials
were scrambling to “make a great and brilliant new preparation” of
court music, “combining both Chinese and barbarian” 戎華兼采.59
Of Qi’s “last lord” (r. 565–577), it was said that he “only
appreciated barbarian music 胡戎樂; he indulged in it without
end.”60
In the efforts of such men, we see attempts to reverse the
currents of the culture wars. For the next half century, the lords of
the later Northern Dynasties—who were, at least originally, Särbi
warriors—acted quite purposively to acclaim both the Särbi and
the warrior (until they were, in part at least, reversed yet again by
Sui Wendi). In Gao Huan’s domain, there was a deep split between
the generals in Taiyuan and the court at Ye.61 In the west, we see
perhaps more purposeful efforts to build a new synthesis. While
rebuilding his administration around the classical Zhou li,
Yuwentai also handed out to Chinese fighting men tribal surnames

57
Tian, Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 339; Tian, however, quotes the
strongly held view of Tian Yuqing 田余庆, Tuoba shi tan 拓跋史探 (Beijing:
Sanlian shudian, 2003), 339, that the Qiyu songs of Liang did not derive from
this corpus.
58
Wei shu 109.2831.
59
Sui shu 14.313–14.
60
Ibid., 14.331.
61
Holmgren, “Politics of the Inner Court,” 320 ff.
106 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

(often taken from the names of groups that had not existed for
centuries).
It is in the manipulation of these signs and symbols that we see
a key feature of these men (and much of the larger population)
during the later Northern Dynasties—not entirely certain of who
they were, they were in the process of recreating themselves.
Chinese and barbarian alike had undergone profound change over
the last several generations, intermarrying, interacting more and
more on a fluid stage. In particular, the Särbi warriors who erupted
into China in the 520s from the northern garrisons were no longer
nomads, were no longer men of the steppes (which had, of course,
been taken over by the Rouran). They, and the larger world in
which they lived, were in a profound state of flux. Thus, in the
evolution of the militaristic tradition of early China, we see a new
wrinkle, as these men yet again recombined elements from the
interior and the hinterland to assemble an in-some-sense
manufactured military culture based not on kinship or even
ethnicity, but on membership in a new, self-designated community,
with a heavy emphasis on the horse and the sword. It is on this
basis, in the Wei River Valley, that the basis of the fubing 府兵
could be laid down—not universal conscription, but regular and
reliable service from a subset of specialized and committed men
and families. And in the description given of this northern
militarized culture we see many of the elements appearing in the
“Northern Songs.”
Under these circumstances, we can clearly say that whether or
not the paean to the sword that we see in the Langye wang poems
was drawn from a northern predecessor, the sword as a symbol was
a deeply intertwined element of northern warrior culture. Even if
the Langye wang poem was a southern parody of northerners’
preoccupations, the sword as an image did draw young men—from
many different communities—into the ranks of northern armies.62

62
Wong, “Ethnicity and Identity,” 97 ff., gives a good description of similar
developments in the sponsorship and content of Buddhist and Daoist stelae in
the sixth century.
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 107

Was this dispersion of the martial ethic done top-down by the

lords, or bottom-up by ambitious youngsters? Perhaps there was a
bit of both top-down and bottom-up working here. In a different
but related set of events, I see Yuwen Tai’s Zhouli reforms as a
purposeful effort to construct a nation out of disparate elements.63
Perhaps this is seen as well in a line from a poem of Yu Xin 庾信
(referring to Chinese who had received from Yuwen Tai a two-
character Särbi surname): “The men with the double-character
surnames can halt armies.”64
As for bottom-up adoption of this military tradition, a few
examples come to mind. The first would be the famous comment
of Yan Zhitui 顏之推 bemoaning the boast of a gentleman from the
Northern Qi court that, “I have a son who is already seventeen
years old. He knows something about writing letters and
memorials. I am having him taught the Hsien-pi [Särbi] language
and playing the lute (pipa), with the hope that he may gain
proficiency and mastery in both. With these accomplishments he
may serve the high ministers and officials, and obtain their
favors.”65 Thus, the father of this young Chinese man was pressing
him to learn the lute, with which perhaps to perform an ode to the
sword. Yan, on the other hand, warned his own sons against the
military career: “In recent times of disorder and dispersion some
noble scholars, though without strength or skill, have gathered a
crowd of followers and discarded their original occupation to seek
a chance for military glory. Since I am weak and I have respect for
my ancestors, I made up my mind to avoid (such adventures). Oh!
my sons and grandsons, pay attention....Modern scholar-officials
who, when they do not study, forthwith call themselves ‘warriors’

63
Scott Pearce, “Form and Matter: Archaizing Reform in Sixth-century
China,” in Culture and Power in the Reconstitution of the Chinese Realm, 200–
600, ed. Scott Pearce, Audrey Spiro, Patricia Ebrey (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2001), 149–78.
64
Yu Zishan ji (SBCK edition.), 2.2a.
65
Yanshi jiaxun 顏氏家訓, with commentary by Yu Jinhua 余金华(Beijing
Huaxia chubanshe, 2002), 9; trans. Teng Ssu-yü, Family Instructions for the Yen
Clan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), 7–8. On the pipa, an import probably from
Central Asia, see Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization, 342–3.
108 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

are in reality simply like rice-sacks and wine-jars.”66 Following the

Qiyu injunction that “a man should act with daring,” Yan Zhitui’s
gone–astrays “...act mischievously, dress gallantly and brag about
their physical exploits.”67
This process seems to have gone furthest in the Wei River
Valley.68 There we are told of one cavalryman who, beguiled by
the way of the warrior depicted in the northern songs, had mastered
the Särbi tongue, and taken to riding through his district in full
armor, with two quivers full of arrows. 69 Having been scattered
like sparrows, his neighbors understandably viewed him with
dread. Others attempted compromise: it is said of one exceptional
young aristocrat that though a skilled mounted archer, he still
composedly wore the clothes of a literatus 儒服. 70 And on the
other side, “barbarians” were also mixing and matching their
clothes at a dizzying rate.71
Thus, under the later Northern Dynasties, we see packaging
and repackaging of symbols to maintain the martial character,
symbols that have a powerful role in many militarized societies:
the horse, the sword. And southern verse is only one of the sources
wherein these elements are presented. In these efforts we see the
knitting together of various groups—Qiang, Xiongnu, Särbi,
Chinese—into a generalized martial order and culture. The
evolution of this tradition would underlay the solid military base of
the early Tang.

66
Ibid., 173–6; Teng, Family Instructions, 129–30.
67
Yanshi jiaxun, 174; Teng, Family Instructions, 130.
68
For an overview of this, see Pearce, “The Yü-wen Regime in Sixth
Century China,” Ph.D. diss., Princeton, 1987, 452 ff.
69
Sui shu 40.1174. It must be noted that he was of an old frontier family,
possibly not Chinese, which had earlier served Helian Bobo.
70
Ibid., 50.1316.
71
See Wong, “Ethnicity and Identity,” 90–91; Audrey Spiro, “Hybrid Vigor:
Memory, Mimesis and the Matching of Meanings in Fifth-century Buddhist
Art,” in Culture and Power, 125–48. Archaeologists have also found evidence
of this in Northern Dynasties tombs: Wang Dong 王東, “Bei Zhou Li Xian mu
xueshu zuotan hui gaishu” 北周李賢墓學術座談會概述, Ningxia shehui kexue
(1984.4): 102–3.
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 109

What then did this northern military culture mean to the

southerner? The northern and southern societies differed in many
ways, but also shared much in common. Embassies crossed the
borders far more frequently than armies, bearing both objects and
ideas. Both interest and derision were mutual.72 But perhaps most
importantly, both sides did have armies and wars, with militarism
playing a prominent role in both north and south.
Poetry was, of course, much more highly developed in the
south, and more deeply embedded in social and political structures.
From the late fifth century on, elite northerners turned more and
more to southern poetical traditions (often with dispiriting results).
At the same time, perhaps in a more limited way, “northern song”
went south. Depictions in the tomb of a Wu prince of the Three
Kingdoms period depict foreign musicians playing vertical flutes,
such music is said to have been used in the fourth and fifth
centuries as military music by southern armies. 73 In the sixth
century, southerners began to rework such north-derived military
music; in Tan’s words, “soften them up” (though once again, it is
hard to link any of them directly to what has survived in the Liang
corpus).74 Treated perhaps something like the American’s occasional
dose of calypso, the “Songs of the Hun,” in at least a tangential way,
came to be incorporated into the elaborate “matrices of convention”
described by Joseph Allen.
Standing alone, so-called barbarian music reached its peak of
popularity during the nadir of the Southern Dynasties, the short-
lived Chen dynasty (557–589) that had been put together out of the
wreckage created by Hou Jing; the popularity of the northern songs
grew as the northern shadow lengthened over Jiankang. Of one
Chen aristocrat it was said that “Every time he ate or drank he
simply had to bring out a large orchestra of women musicians with

72
See Scott Pearce, Audrey Spiro and Patricia Ebrey, “Introduction,” in
Culture and Power, 14–26.
73
For the tomb, see Dien, Six Dynasties Civilization, 350; for the use of this
movie in armies, see Dien’s description of war music at the early sixth century
Dengxian tomb (352); and Tan, Beichao min’ge, 81, note 48.
74
Tan, Beichao min’ge, 80.
110 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

various instruments, to play all the songs of the Qiang and the
Hu.”75 As for Chen’s “last lord” (r. 582–589), he made a policy of
sending palace women north to learn the instruments there, and
then had them play the songs of “Dai of the North” when liquor
filled his heart with joy.76

Two Southern Songs

As previously mentioned, while Jiankang may have been only
a final stop in the long odyssey of the Qiyu songs, other pieces are
clearly entirely southern compositions, such as Song No. 4 of
“Song Lyrics for Breaking Off Weeping Willows” 折楊柳歌辭:
Far off you can descry the Meng-chin ford,
And all its clumps of dancing willow-trees.
But I am a son of a caitiff clan,
77
and cannot understand you Han-boys songs.
遙看孟津河
楊柳鬰婆娑
我是虜家兒
不解漢兒歌

This is one of nine “breaking the willow” songs contained

within two different sets in the “Liang Songs of Drums and Horns
and Barbarian Winds.” As mentioned above, Joseph Allen has
given a lengthy discussion of how the “willow” songs are
embedded in a complex “matrix of convention” that had grown up
in the south. (Moving within this matrix, Allen and other modern
translators have read into this piece a dialogue between a man and
a woman.) And the fundamental theme of this piece is to draw
boundaries—ethnic and geographical—and to place the barbarian
outside of them. The northern Duke of Guangping would not be
much interested in playing the role of the “caitiff’s son,” unable to

75
Chen shu, Zhonghua shuju edition., 11.184; cited by Tan, Beichao min’ge, 81.
76
Sui shu 13.309.
77
Yuefu shiji 2: 25.370; the first two lines of the translation are taken from
Frodsham, Anthology of Chinese Verse, 107.
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 111

understand the words of the implicitly superior Han. And to turn

this position around, in some sense this song represents an ancient
Jiankang version of the American south’s blackface.78
For the last of the songs that I will bring forth, I will admit that
my position is shaky. But having begun down a shaky road, I will
take it one step further, with perhaps the ugliest song in the entire
collection:
Greens and yellows, greens and yellows;
The freckled rocks are crumbling.
Beat to death the wild ox,
79
Bind and slaughter the wild goat.
青青黃黃
雀石頹唐
槌殺野牛
押殺野羊.

It must be said that this piece is an eye-opener. Written in a

very archaic style, with 4-syllable lines resembling those in the
Shijing, it is Song No. 1 in a minor section of the “Liang Songs of
Drums and Horns and Barbarian Winds” called “Diqu Song
Lyrics” 地驅歌樂辭. Guo Maoqian quotes the anonymous Chen
author of Record of Music Past and Present as stating regarding
this set that “contemporary [i.e., Chen] songs have this tune.” Tan
infers that this means the words to Song 1 come from the Liang.
Though he then goes on to suggest that the slaughter of the sheep
and ox are “precisely the scenes of the northlands,” I cannot
imagine that the delight in violence that we see in this piece comes
from an actual herdsman. The life of the herdsman is indeed hard,
and their life centers around killing animals. But what I hear in this
song, whether composed in the south or the north, is the sort of
fascination with sadistic violence that comes from people not

78
In her analysis of this song, Tian (Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 337–8)
after suggesting the possibility that this song was of northern origin then goes on
quite sensibly to describe how this piece would be received by a southern
audience.
79
Yuefu shiji 2: 25.366; Tan, Beichao min’ge, 59.
112 Pearce: The Way of the Warrior

involved in slaughter in any intimate and on–going way. In fact, I

can’t help but compare this scene to the great buffalo slaughters of
the nineteenth century, which were of course performed primarily
by mannered and well–dressed gentlemen from Boston or New
York, who took advantage of the rail to enter an Eden where they
could richly fulfill their fantasies. Lacking a rail system, the aristocrats
of Jiankang (or even Ye) could perhaps live their fantasies out only in
verse.

Conclusions
In this paper, I have made a tentative and preliminary effort to
view the martial tradition of the Northern Dynasties through the
prism of the so-called “folk songs of the Northern Dynasties.”
My first conclusion is that although bits and pieces of nomad
folk songs may be present in these pieces, it is difficult precisely to
identify which bits and pieces those are. To the extent that at least
some of these songs ultimately derive from the steppe—and many
clearly do not—they have been profoundly transformed as they
move between cultures and languages. And this is as true of the
use of the song among northerners in the sixth century as it is of
southerners.
Related to this is the issue of use of the stuff of the hinterland.
In his excellent book, Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress,
Thomas Abler discusses the process by which Englishmen or
Americans incorporated bits and pieces of hinterland garb—the
tartan of the highlander, the apparel of the North African Zouave—
into their military uniforms. We see this as well in early medieval
China, where in the north, the rapidly changing non–Chinese
populations drew on the hinterlands of Central Asia, or the Rouran,
or their own ancestors, to recreate a new version of an enduring,
imperial military tradition. This then trickled south, where it was
incorporated within a broader cultural matrix as an image of the
caricaturized barbarian; of mild interest when these people were at
a distance, frightening when—as they were about to do for the
Chen’s “last lord”—they came up close.
Early Medieval China 13–14.2 (2008) 113

Finally, I will point out that several important issues here have
been neglected. Further work will need to be done examining the
composition and dispersal of these pieces in connection with
particular groups and events. I am thinking here particularly of the
role these songs played in Luoyang in its last years, and in the Qi
court at Ye. Of broader importance and interest would be examination
of key issues seen in many warrior traditions: these include death,
honor, and women warriors.