Cen Shen, a famous poet of the Tang Dynasty, has been missing out all his life. At the age of 32, he left Chang'an and went to Qiuzi in the Western Regions, where he served as the shogunate secretary of Gao Xianzhi, the envoy of the Anxi Festival.
However, he missed that moment of Datang's glory. As a poet who entered high school at the age of 27, he finally got an official position of the ninth grade after three years of waiting.
His heart was full of pain. Although it is impossible to achieve career promotion in the capital, there may be opportunities in the frontier. Therefore, after being promoted by the imperial court to the judge of Anxi Jiedu, he was ready to set off and marched westward, hoping to follow the famous general Gao Xianzhi who led the Tang Dynasty to Central Asia and climb to the peak of his life.
He once lamented to his friends, "Fame must be early, and the years should not be wasted", "The husband is not rich in his thirties, and An can keep the pen and inkstone all day long". His dream was to emulate Ban Chao and make a fortune in the frontier, but when he embarked on a long journey to the west, the desert wind and sand and the scorching Gobi made him homesick.
On the way, when he met a friend who was going back to Beijing in the opposite direction, he confided: "The old garden is a long way to the east, and the tears of the two-sleeved dragon bell are not dry. Immediately meet without paper and pen, and report peace with the words of the king. ”
His thoughts have penetrated through the ages and are still deeply imprinted in his heart.
A person's success first comes from the inheritance of the family. The poet Cen Shen was a native of Jiangling, Jingzhou (now Jiangling, Hubei), and his family had three prime ministers in four generations. Among them, his great-grandfather Cen Wenwen was a famous prime minister during the period of Li Shimin, Taizong of the Tang Dynasty; His uncle Cen Changqian was the prime minister of the Tang Gaozong Li Zhi period; His cousin Cen Xi was the prime minister of Tang Zhongzong and Tang Ruizong.
However, the glory of the family does not guarantee the success of a person, and although Cen Shen's family is prominent, his uncle and cousin were killed one after another for political reasons.
This bumpy fate has given Cen Shen a strong sense of fame and ambition since he was a child, and he is eager to renew the glory of his family and move forward with the thriving Tang Empire.
Although he once lived in seclusion in Songyang and built a academy to study, he never forgot to work hard in this glorious era. Eventually, he began in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty (737), in order to seek fame, he has been running back and forth between Chang'an and Luoyang, although in the third year of Tianbao (744) at the age of 27 years of high school Jinshi, he has been struggling at the bottom of the imperial politics since then, until the third year of Jinshi and the third year, he finally waited for an official position on the ninth rank (the right to lead the government soldiers Cao to join the army).
Therefore, when Cen Shen was canonized by the imperial court and reassigned to the judge of the Anxi Festival on the eighth grade, he cherished this time to perform his duties in the Western Regions, because under the personnel selection mechanism of the Tang Dynasty, even if Jinshi and Dihe have the aura of the family's door, but after all, it is a long time, and a declining son like him, without the support of nobles in the court, it is not easy to climb the smooth road.
Among the poets of the Tang Dynasty, there was an out-and-out troubadour poet of the Western Regions - Cen Shen (718?) 769? ）。His poems are full of the reality of life, and his "Jing Volcano" depicts in detail the wonders of spontaneous combustion in Xinjiang's underground coal mines.
However, he failed to catch up with a good era. Although the Tang Dynasty had established a strong foundation in the Western Regions during the reign of Li Shimin, the rise of the Tibetans and the Black-clothed Great Food caused the Tang Dynasty's power in the Western Regions to gradually decline over time.
Despite this, Cen Shen's footprints still left a deep imprint in the Western Regions.
Gao Xianzhi, a Goguryeo native from the northeastern part of the Tang Dynasty, served as the supreme governor of the Anxi Metropolitan Protectorate, leading the Three Kingdoms of the Tang Dynasty, Tubo, and Dashi to compete for hegemony. Building on his military achievements, he gradually rose to the rank of protector of Anxi, and in 747 he successfully defeated the small state of Bolu, which was dependent on Tibet, and once again raised his status.
At this time, the reputation and power of the Tang Dynasty in Central Asia reached its peak.
This historical story tells the story of the Tang Dynasty's struggle with the Great Food in Central Asia. The protagonist of the story is Gao Xianzhi, the protector of Anxi, who, in order to expand his military exploits and plunder wealth, killed and plundered the Hu merchants in the Western Regions, and launched an attack on Dashi.
However, his attack did not go as planned, and he was ultimately defeated at the Battle of Talas, which led to the loss of the Tang Dynasty's majesty west of the Green Mountains, and for more than a thousand years, the iron cavalry of the Chinese Empire was never able to gallop the Central Asian steppes for long.
The story reflects the brutality and invincibility of war, as well as the challenges of the state in expanding and maintaining its territorial integrity.
Gao Xianzhi, a famous general of the first generation, suffered a setback in his second expedition to Central Asia, which deeply worried Cen Shen, who had hoped to follow him in his achievements. Cen Shen was originally Gao Xianzhi's shogunate**, but with Gao Xianzhi's position transfer, he had to return to Chang'an to wait for the opportunity.
At this time, he felt that the road ahead was blank, and his career was bumpy, and he even considered giving up. However, the national fortunes of the Tang Dynasty did not decline because of this, and it was the famous general Feng Changqing who took over the whip of Gao Xianzhi.
Although Feng Changqing was not good looking, he rose step by step under Gao Xianzhi's account with his perseverance and talent, and took over the four towns of Anxi and the Beiting Protectorate after the Battle of Talas, becoming the general of the Tang Empire's army in the Western Regions.
In the next two years, Feng Changqing led his army to break through the Great Bolu Kingdom, allowing the Tang Dynasty to revitalize Central Asia again.
The Tang Empire made a comeback in Central Asia, and the poet Cen Shen went to the Western Regions again with great pride. He closely linked the national fortunes of the Tang Empire with the creation of Biansai poems, and used words to depict the last glory of the Tang Dynasty in the Western Regions.
Although there is no lack of the will of the commander in his poems, his works still combine the military brilliance of the Tang Dynasty with the natural scenery of the Western Regions, making the reader feel as if they are in the middle of it.
In Cen Shen's poems, we see the courage of the soldiers and the heroic pride of the poets. He was the only poet of the Central Plains in the Tang Dynasty who actually walked out of the Hexi Corridor and went directly to Xinjiang and the Western Regions, which gave his poems more real life experience and emotional experience.
However, the civil strife of the empire was about to destroy the last glory of Biansaishi. In the fourteenth year of Tang Xuanzong Tianbao, An Lushan rebelled in Fanyang, and Feng Changqing, Gao Xianzhi and others defended Tongguan in order to resist the rebels.
However, Tang Xuanzong's indiscriminate and unreasonable punishment led to the death of Feng Changqing and Gao Xianzhi, which made the Anshi rebels lose ground for a time. At the turning point of history, Feng Changqing left his last words, hoping that Tang Xuanzong would not believe slander, and his death also forced Gao Xianzhi to fight, and finally defeated Tongguan.
The gateway to Guanzhong has been broken, and the Anshi rebels have smashed Chang'an, and the national fortunes of the Tang Empire have also declined. However, Cen Shen's poems allow us to witness the last glory of the Tang Dynasty in the Western Regions.
The loss of Tongguan caused the gate of Guanzhong to be opened, and the two famous generals Feng Changqing and Gao Xianzhi were killed at the same time, which ruined the luck of the Tang Dynasty and sounded the peak death knell of Tang poetry.
After the news of Feng Changqing's defeat in Luoyang came, Cen Shen had an ominous premonition, and he wrote in "Sending the Four Towns Xue Shi Yu to the East": "Send tears and clothes, and the end of the world has not returned."
When the general first offended, what could he do with the doorman? After the fall of Tongguan, An Lushan's rebels soon captured Chang'an in June of that year (756).
The war drums are hoarse, the imperial warriors, the glory of the Great Song Dynasty Anxi Protectorate is impressive, at this moment, it has been 22 years since Lu You died in 1192. If the poet knows what to do, he may also be grieved in the face of the fall of foreign hands in the vast land of the Western Regions that he once longed for.
In the following millennium, as the Chinese Empire completely withdrew from the competition in the Western Regions, the prosperity of China's Biansai poetry also fell after Lu You's death. Lu You has passed away, and the Western Regions is not there, so this is not a nation's lamentation.