Poetry of War: The Cost of Conflict

Chinese civilization has known war for as long as it has known peace. The earliest poems in the Shijing are soldiers' songs and homesick wives' laments. The great dynasties expanded and collapsed through military force. And through it all, Chinese poets have written about war — its heroism and its horror, its glory and its waste, the fellowship of arms and the loneliness of the survivor. War poetry (战争诗, zhanzheng shi) in the Chinese tradition is not a celebration of conquest but a meditation on suffering, a demand for justice, and a record of what human beings do to each other.

The Shijing and the Earliest War Poems

The Shijing contains many war poems, but they are not patriotic anthems. They are soldiers' songs. One of the most famous, 'The Plantain Gatherers,' describes troops marching to the sound of drums: 'Our soldiers beat the drums and raise a clamor; / we rise up and advance. / People of Cao and their troops / we challenge and respond. / We climb the walls and besiege them, / we cannot conquer them; / this grief has no end.' The poem is not about victory but about frustration and loss.

Another Shijing poem, 'Gathering Bracken' (采薇), describes a soldier fighting the Xianyun tribes on the northern frontier. The final stanza is one of the most poignant in all of Chinese poetry: 'I went on campaign; / the willows were softly spring. / I come back now; / the snow falls in a storm. / I walk slowly, hungry and thirsty; / my heart is sad. / No one knows my sorrow.' The contrast between the beauty of the willows when the soldier left and the snow when he returns captures the pathos of all wars.

The Han and the Frontier War Tradition

The Han dynasty's long wars against the Xiongnu produced a new body of war poetry, much of it in the yuefu style. The Han yuefu poems about war are notable for their unblinking depiction of suffering. 'The Battle South of the City Wall' describes a battlefield where 'the dead lie unburied, / their bones white in the sun. / The crows and kites feast.' There is no glory in these poems, only the brutal reality of death.

The frontier war tradition continued through the Tang, when poets like Wang Changling, Cen Shen, and Gao Shi wrote about the soldiers defending the northwestern passes. Their poems combine pride in the soldiers' courage with anger at the commanders who wasted their lives. 'Our generals have been defeated ten times, / but the dead men are not mourned. / Their blood has soaked the desert sand. / They lie where they fell.' The Chinese war poet is not a propagandist; he is a witness.

Du Fu and the An Lushan Rebellion

Du Fu's war poems from the An Lushan Rebellion are among the most powerful antiwar poems ever written. He was a refugee in his own country, separated from his family, and he saw the war not from the perspective of the commanders but from the perspective of the people who suffered most. 'The Pressgang at Shihao Village' describes a village where every man of military age has already been conscripted, yet the recruiters return to take an old man and his daughter-in-law.

Du Fu's famous poem 'Spring Prospect' — written while he was a prisoner in rebel-occupied Chang'an — uses the beauty of spring to sharpen the pain of war: 'The nation is broken, but the mountains and rivers remain. / Spring in the city — the grass and trees grow deep. / Grieving at the times, even flowers bring tears. / Hating separation, the birds' song startles the heart.' The flowers and birds are not indifferent to human suffering; they intensify it by reminding the poet of the peace that has been destroyed.

Li Bai and the Cost of Empire

Li Bai also wrote war poems, though in a different register. His 'Fighting South of the Ramparts' describes a battle in the context of imperial ambition: 'Last year we fought at the source of the Sanggan River; / this year we fight at the banks of the Cong River. / We have washed our swords in the waves of the Tianshan Mountains; / we have fed our horses to the grass beyond the sea.' The poem traces the widening arc of imperial war until it concludes with a devastating image: 'The desert sand has turned white with the bones of soldiers.'

Li Bai's 'Silk-Washing Stream' series includes poems from the home front — women washing silk while their husbands serve on distant frontiers. The women's labor continues, but their hearts are absent: 'My husband is fighting at the Phoenix Tower. / I go on washing silk as before. / But the silk is not as white as / the bones that lie under the desert snow.' The juxtaposition of domestic peace and distant slaughter is typical of Chinese war poetry's moral imagination.

War Poetry After the Tang

The Song dynasty, which faced constant military threats from the Khitan and Jurchen, produced its own war poetry, much of it suffused with a sense of loss. The Song had lost control of the northern heartland, and its war poets wrote not about glorious campaigns but about the territories that had been surrendered. Lu You dreams of the reconquest of the north in poem after poem, knowing he will never see it. Xin Qiji, a general who was never allowed to fight the war he wanted, wrote some of the most passionate military ci poems in the language.

In the twentieth century, Chinese war poetry took on new forms and subjects. The anti-Japanese war (1937–1945) produced a flood of patriotic verse, some in classical forms and some in the new vernacular. The Korean War produced poems that both celebrated and questioned the sacrifice of Chinese soldiers. Today, Chinese war poetry continues to wrestle with the same questions that the Shijing poets asked two and a half millennia ago: what is the cost of war, and who pays it?