If you don't break Loulan, you won't explain what it is. Who wrote it?

"If you don't break Loulan, you will never return" means that you will never return to your hometown until you defeat the invading enemy. This poem was written by Wang Changling.

These two poems are from "Seven Poems about Joining the Army" written by Wang Changling, a poet in the Tang Dynasty. The original text of the whole poem is as follows:

There are dark snow-capped mountains in Changyun, Qinghai, and the lonely city overlooks Yumenguan.

yellow sand wears golden armor in many battles, and it will not be returned until it breaks Loulan.

what does it mean? Translate it into the vernacular as follows:

The Qinghai Lake is covered with dark clouds, covering the continuous snow-capped mountains. The ancient city of frontier fortress, Yumen Xiongguan, is thousands of miles away and faces each other from afar.

The soldiers guarding the border have been through many battles, their armor is worn out, and their aspirations are immortal. They will never return to their hometown until they defeat the invading enemy.

There are some words in it, and I think it is necessary to explain them separately, so as to better understand the meaning of this poem:

Qinghai: Qinghai Lake, in present-day Qinghai Province. Ge Shuhan, a general of the Tang Dynasty, built a city here and placed the Shenwei army on guard.

long clouds: layers of thick clouds.

Snow Mountain: that is, Qilian Mountain. The top of the mountain is covered with snow all year round, so it is cloudy.

isolated city: the ancient frontier fortress city.

Yumenguan: the name of the border pass was set in Han dynasty, which is in the west of Dunhuang in Gansu province. One is "Yanmenguan".

break: a "chop".

loulan: the name of the western regions in Han dynasty, namely Shanshan country, is located in the southeast of Shanshan county in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. In the Western Han Dynasty, King Loulan communicated with Xiongnu and repeatedly killed the envoys who communicated with the Western Regions in the Han Dynasty. Here, it generally refers to the minority regimes that often invaded the border in the northwest of Tang Dynasty.

Never give it back: Write "Never give it back".

when the author wrote this poem, what was the creative background at that time?

This poem is the fourth in a series of poems "Seven Poems from the Army". In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the national strength was strong, the monarch was determined to forge ahead and defend the frontier and expand the territory, and people were eager to make a difference in this era. The military commander spilled his blood into the battlefield to make contributions, while the poet was infected by the great spirit of the times and wrote a series of magnificent poems with his solemn and stirring lofty sentiments.

Now that we know the creation background and the meaning of the whole poem, let's appreciate it together:

Readers of frontier poems in the Tang Dynasty are often confused because of the various geographical names involved in the poem. There are those who suspect that the author is not familiar with geography, so he doesn't ask for a very good solution, and there are also those who write for the solution. This is the case with this fourth poem.

The first two sentences mentioned three place names. The snow-capped mountains are the Qilian Mountains in the south of Hexi Corridor. Qinghai and Yumenguan are thousands of miles apart from each other, but they appear on the same picture, so there are various explanations for these two sentences. Some people say that the first sentence is looking forward and the next sentence is looking back at home. This is very strange. Qinghai and Snow Mountain are in front, and Yumenguan is behind, so the hometown that the lyric hero looks back at should be the Western Regions west of Yumenguan, which is not a Han soldier, but Hu Bing. On the other hand, the second sentence is the inverted text of "Looking from afar at Yumenguan, a lonely city", and the object of looking from afar is "the dark snow mountain in Qinghai". There are two misunderstandings here: one is to interpret "looking from afar" as "looking from afar", and the other is to misunderstand the general description of the northwest border area as what the lyric hero sees from the eyes, and the former misunderstanding is due to the latter misunderstanding.

"There are dark snow-capped mountains in Qinghai, and the lonely city overlooks Yumenguan". At the beginning, the poet describes a magnificent and desolate frontier scenery, which summarizes the appearance of the northwest frontier. The sky on Qinghai Lake is covered by long clouds, and the snow-capped mountains stretching in Hubei are faintly visible. Over the snow-capped mountains, it is an isolated city in the desert of Hexi Corridor, and further west, you can see Yumenguan. In the Tang Dynasty, there were Tubo in the west and Turks in the north. At that time, Qinghai was the place where Tang Jun and Tubo fought many times, and outside Yumenguan was the sphere of influence of Turks, so these two cities were important frontier cities in the Tang Dynasty. Looking at Qinghai and Yumenguan makes soldiers think of the fighting scenes that have happened in these two places, and they can't help but feel excited. It can be seen that these two sentences contain rich feelings, such as the attention of the soldiers guarding the frontier to the frontier, their pride in being able to shoulder the responsibility of defending the country, and the loneliness of the harsh border environment and the hard life of the generals guarding the frontier. All kinds of feelings are integrated into this desolate and vast, confused and dim scene.

"The yellow sand has penetrated the golden armor in many battles, and it will not be returned until the Loulan is broken." The two sentences changed from the description of the environment with a blend of scenes to direct lyric. "Yellow sand wears golden armor in hundreds of battles" is a poem with strong generalization. The long time of defending the border, the frequent wars, the hardships of fighting, the toughness of the enemy and the desolation of the border land are all summarized in these seven words. "Hundreds of battles" is more abstract, and the word "yellow sand" highlights the characteristics of the northwest battlefield. From "hundreds of battles" to "wearing golden armor", it is even more conceivable that the battle is arduous and fierce, and it is also conceivable that there are a series of heroic sacrifices in this long time. However, although the shining golden armor has worn through, the soldiers' ambition to serve the country has not been tempered, but has become more determined in the tempering of desert sand. "Don't break Loulan and never return it" is the heroic oath of the battle-hardened soldiers. The more the last sentence highlights the hardships of fighting and the frequency of wars, the more forceful and hit the floor this sentence becomes.

The excellent frontier poems in the prosperous Tang Dynasty have an important ideological feature, that is, while expressing the lofty sentiments and ambitions of the soldiers guarding the frontier, they do not shy away from the hardships of war. This article is an obvious example. It can be said that three or four sentences are not empty and superficial lyricism, precisely because there are one or two sentences that are rich in environmental descriptions. The highly unified typical environment and characters' feelings is a prominent advantage of Wang Changling's quatrains, which is also clearly reflected in this article.

Finally, I think it is necessary to introduce the author of this article:

Wang Changling (698-756), born in Jinyang, Hedong (now Taiyuan, Shanxi). A famous frontier poet in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, later generations praised him as the "Seven Wonders". In his early years, he was poor and trapped in farming, but in his 3 s, he began to be a scholar. First secretary of the provincial school book lang, but also learned in the macro-speech, awarded Si Shuiwei, because of things demoted to Lingnan. With Li Bai, Gao Shi, Wang Wei, Wang Zhihuan, Cen Can, etc. At the end of Kaiyuan, he returned to Chang 'an and was awarded Jiangning Cheng. The slandered dragon captain. An Shi revolted and was killed by Lu Qiuxiao, the secretariat. His poems are famous for the seven wonders, especially those he wrote in the northwest frontier fortress before he ascended the first place, and he has the reputation of "Poet Master Wang Jiangning" (also known as "Poet Tianzi Wang Jiangning").