Geese in Chinese poetry

True geese are difficult to differentiate into genus or species based on anatomical differences other than coloration, especially if the geese occur, as they often do in poetry, in the distance, flying, and perhaps even more heard than seen: but, the genus and species identification is not generally of importance in Chinese poetry, although whether the goose is wild or domestic is of importance.

One of the distinctive features of flying flocks of geese is their typical "V" or wedge-shaped formation, and the loud vocalizations which accompany them on their flight.

Geese and their eggs have been used for food, their feathers for thermal insulation and other purposes, and their arrivals and departures as seasonal indicators.

The common character for "wild goose" is 鴈 (with variant form 雁, both are yàn in Hanyu Pinyin, *ngan4 in Tang).

Anciently, the wild goose was one of the 9 Chinese gù (雇), or migratory types of birds employed (the modern meaning of the word) as seasonal indicators for initiating appropriate agricultural practices: the annual autumnal appearance of wild geese indicated the time to begin the harvest gathering (Wilder & Ingram, sub #361, 僱).

The annual migratory pattern of geese makes their bi-annual appearances in spring and autumn symbolically useful, as poetic short-hand for the changing seasons.

She mentions in this ballad how the pair of swans arrive at the poem's beginning "as part of a flock flying in formation".

Poems include "Shu Goes Hunting", an ode to the chariot archer Shu, in which the formation of his chariot horses is compared to that of a flight of geese, ("大叔于田" - "Da Shu Yu Tian", Airs of the States, 鄭 - Zheng), which begins (Legge translation): This is an example of the implication from the orderly flight of wild geese, in which their "habit of flying in a V-shaped wedge was read as a model of order and hierarchy, a concept which applied to both family and court.

Brothers were likened to geese flying in close formation, and a man in high office was compared to a goose soaring to heaven" (Murck, 75).

In the same section, the poem "女曰雞鳴" - "Nu Yue Ji Ming" (Legge) goes: Even after marriage, the wife here expects to receive a duck or goose.

David Hawkes (209) translates this line as: Geese are a major motif in Han dynasty era poetry, including the yuefu of the Music Bureau and the folk (or folk-style) ballads of the Nineteen Old Songs.

Remaining obstinate, Su Wu managed by eating the lining of his coat for food and melting the snow which drifted into his prison for water to drink.

Various events occurred including a lull in actual combat, and the two sides again turned to diplomacy, in order to reconcile their differences: the Han emperor sending another ambassadorial mission toward the territory in which Su Wu was being held.

Presumably in order avoid diplomatic complications, the Xiongnu continued their attempt to conceal the presence of Su Wu.

However, according to the historical account, the new Chinese diplomatic mission tricked the chanyu by claiming that the emperor shot down a wild goose with a message from Su Wu tied to its foot (Murck, 75–76).

And so, the story goes, the chanyu fell for the bluff, and rather than risk diplomatic embarrassment, Su Wu was released, returning to China in 81 BCE (Murck, 76).

During the Tang dynastic era geese fly through the verse of the poets, or perhaps resting in the darkness of night on a level, sandy shore.

Since when the ancient Chu state had had its glory days, the "lakes and rivers region" around and south of Dongting Lake and its tributaries such as the Xiao had been located has long been poetically noted as a place of exile, where even the most talented and loyal government ministers and officials might be slandered at court and relegated to mosquito-infested swamp areas or sent to manage villages of non-Chinese ethnic peoples, in isolation from there intellectual pears and fellow poets.

In a parallel couplet, in his poem "South of the mountains sending off an official", Zhang explicitly compares and contrasts himself to an autumn goose: but when spring comes he finds himself still stuck south of the mountain ranges which separate him from the capital and the main area of Chinese civilization at the time, while the other geese get to go back north (Murck, 76; and note 17, 313).

Du Fu encountered a stumbling block in his career path, in 735, when he took and failed the civil service examinations.

The same resultant turmoil which ravaged the Tang empire for more than the ensuing decade also decimated Du Fu's career: rebel forces swept across the land.

Du Fu not only lost his job before he could start it, but he and his family ended up as refugees in the Xiaoxiang, where he eventually died, but not before writing poems which would secure his place in poetic tradition, many of his most important poems being written in his last several years, in the heart of the Xiaoxiang, where the migrating wild geese came to rest, moult, and prepare for their next journey north.

The motif of geese grew in intensity in the poetry of Du Fu, as he spent his last years, displaced from his ancestral home area to the ancient land of Chu.

Du Fu's poetic imagery of geese turned out to be portable, and was adopted by such poets, as the Song dynasty's Su Shi.

This trial was known as the "Crow Terrace Poetry Case", and involved Su Shi together with numerous "co-conspirators", including Wang Shen (Murck, 126).

In court, in what must have been quite embarrassing for his political opponents, Su Shi made a confession explaining how his poems were derogatory to his political enemies, in most explicit detail, but pointing out that he was not guilty because he had said nothing and allowed nothing that was directly demeaning of the emperor or the state itself, and that the verses in question merely and legitimately mocked officials who in fairness deserved to have their deficiencies as public servants made public.

And if, by metaphor, the poet is a goose, stranded on a southern sandbar; then, the "descent" into exile begins with the poet/goose's arrival in the Xiaoxiang.