Sh i P oe t ry oF t He m i ng anD q i ng Dy na s t i e s 361old yuefu song titles clearly indicate the theme of war and military expedition—
for example, “Zhan cheng nan” (We Fought South of the Walls), “Cong jun xing”
(Song of Serving in the Army), and “Yin ma chang cheng ku xing” (Song of Letting
Horses Drink at the Long Wall Spring). A definite subgroup in the yuefu genre is
related to the theme of war. Many yuefu titles continued to be used in the later
periods; they often serve as an index to the subject of the poems.14 Although ge-
nerically not considered yuefu, Du Fu’s ballads, such as “Bingche xing” (Ballad of
Army Carts), “San li” (Three Officers), and “San bie” (Three Separations), and the
Late Tang poet Wei Zhuang’s (ca. 836–910) long poem “Qin fu yin” (The Lament
of the Lady of Qin), on the devastations of the Huang Chao Rebellion (875–884)
written in the persona of a woman, are modeled on the yuefu song tradition of re-
counting the destruction of war from the experiences and point of view of the com-
mon people.15 In the Middle Tang, we see an explicit move among poets, notably
Bai Juyi (772–846) and Yuan Zhen (779–831), to develop the xin yuefu (new yuefu)
as a poetry dedicated to social criticism.
Poetry recording the writer’s own experience of war is often traced back to the
poem “Beifen shi” (Poem of Lament and Indignation), attributed to the woman
poet Cai Yan (176?–early third century), in which the female narrator describes
the carnage wrought by the invading Xiongnu and her own capture by them at
the end of the Later Han dynasty (25–220).16 But the poet who made poetry into
a consistent and effective medium to record personal experience and eyewitness
accounts during wartime atrocities was Du Fu.17 His long poems in the song form,
such as “Bei zheng” (Northern Expedition) and “Zi jing fu Fengxian xian yonghuai
wubai zi” (From the Capital to Fengxian: Expressing My Feelings in 500 Words),
to name the most famous two, recount the devastation of the An Lushan Rebellion
(755–763) as experienced by him and those whom he came into contact with in the
chaos. They remain strong indictments of the brutality of war, all the more power-
ful and moving for being personal, firsthand experiences. Implicitly or explicitly,
Du Fu remained the model of inspiration for poets writing about the horrors of
war that they personally witnessed.
The widespread violence during the Ming–Qing dynastic transition in the middle
decades of the seventeenth century not only was perpetrated by the Manchus dur-
ing their military conquest, but also encompassed attacks, pillage, plunder, and
destruction carried out during internal uprisings by native groups of local bandits,
thugs, rebels, and roving soldiers. The lives of countless men and women, old and
young, were displaced and often destroyed regardless of class and region. Record-
ing the common experience of fleeing from Qing troops, renegade Ming soldiers,
and local bandits in this disordered time forms a thematic subgenre of poetry.
Many poems are identified explicitly in the title with the term bi luan (avoiding,
escaping from disorder), bi bing (escaping from the soldiers), bi kou (escaping from
the bandits), or bi lu (escaping from the caitiffs). Many of these poem titles also
specify one of the two years in the Chinese sexagenary cycle of the Manchu con-
quest: Jiashen (1644) and Yiyou (1645). The fall of the Ming empire, at first heard
as the tragic news that arrived from the distant capital Beijing and later the south-