China the Beautiful

[Hua ren]

This favourite poems of mine" Seeing Off Yuan the Second on a Mission to Anxi Wang Wei" relating to a music piece I like "Yang Guan san Die"

In the first line of this poems, wei cheng zhao yu yi qing chen". Can anyone tell where is this Weicheng in china's today.

xie xie

[chinapage]

This famous poem by Wang Wei is quoted everywhere,
including several times at this web site. You can see
it at,

http://www.chinapage.com/wang2n.html

where you can also listen to the sound file of "Yang Kuan."

I am not certain about the actual location of "Weicheng"
mentioned in the poem; but I can venture a guess.

There is no Weicheng in the atlas I have. I believe that
"Wei Cheng" means the "city of Wei Nan". [Cheng is city].
In the poem, "Wei Nan City" is shortened to "Wei City".

The city of "Wei Nan" is a short distance north of Si'an, whcih was the capital city at the time.

Wang Wei is bidding farewell to his friend who is going
beyong the Great Wall, through its westernmost Gate,
which is Yang Guan.

For the location of Yang Guan, I have a map.
http://www.chinapage.com/friend/goh/beijing/greatwall/greatwall.html

Hope this will start you with your search.

[Aolung]

I'd go together with Ming:

1)
The T'ang capital was Ch'ang-an (near today's Xi'an) - so one can assume that the poem's content is to be settled in this area (with main part of official - hence also 'poetical' - life focussed on it).
2)
There's the river Wei He (the greatest tributary of Huang He) with the emperor city Xi'an at its shores. (I remember once having passed the Wei on one of its famous bridges there!)
3)
South to the Wei (Wei Nan!), there's still the city Weinan in this area (remember the great flood there some years ago!), that can be named by 'Wei-Cheng'.

Just my two cents!

For what it's worth.

Alfred

[Hua ren]

Gentlemen thanks for the input.