A Preliminary Study of the Landscape Poems of the Western Regions by Qi Yunshi From YiliTaking the Tianshan Mountains and Deserts in the Western Regions as Examples

Mengchi Manuscript and Xichui Zhuzhi Ci are concentrated reflections of Qi Yunshi’s spiritual life during his exile in Yili. The poet used documentary techniques to show the Western Regions’ folk customs and culture. His landscape poems depicted the unique natural scenery of the Western Regions and embodied the poet’s complex emotions and feelings of life after exile. The poet described the Tianshan Mountains that contained the consciousness of individual awakening and permeated the consciousness of individual history, geography and philosophy. He also described the deserts that breeds hope in desperation, and the wind urges it to fail. The inverted and more resilient deserts finally embodies the poet’s deep sense of anxiety and the family and country sentiment of guarding the border and being ordered by history.