Monday, February 14, 2022

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 30

臣伏戎羌

chén fú róng qiāng

"The western tribes were subjugated"

 

I made that remark about wars of pacification in my last post without reading this line, believe it or not. Here we have a reference to the seemingly endless conflict between the Han and, well, everyone north and west of them. 戎 Rong is a catch-all term for non-Han "barbarians" to the west, and 羌 Qiang, according to Kroll's dictionary, is an "ancient name for proto-Tibetan peoples who migrated south from the Kokonor region."

You might recognize 臣 from my sign-off in Chinese: 微臣, "your humble servant."


微臣
史大偉

 

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