New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry

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(Chen 2003: 102–04)

In accordance with the typical structure of a symphony, the poem

is divided into three stanzas of identical size (24 
16 = 384 spaces).

The first stanza is composed of 384 bing’s 兵 (“soldiers”). The

perfect rectangle evokes the magnificence of a military formation.

The second stanza introduces irregularities embodied by two new

characters pingËand pongÌ. Two onomatopoeic words suggest-

ing gunshots, the characters differ from bingonly in that they have

one stroke less. The missing stroke in the lower part of bingmakes

ping and pong look like soldiers with missing limbs. The blank

spaces where the bing’s are in the first stanza evoke the disappear-

ance of some soldiers. The splendid formation that we saw in the

first stanza is now broken up, and as the battle goes on, more and

more soldiers are missing. The last stanza returns to perfect regularity.

Now all the bing’s in the first stanza are replaced by qiu’s Í

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