Representing among the first extant actual descriptions of what the Chinese referred to as “black” slaves, the poem Kunlun’er (The Black Slaves) is the composition of the aesthete and official Zhang Ji (ca. 765-ca. 830). Being a native of Wujiang in Hezhou (in modern-day Anhui province), Zhang Ji obtained the coveted doctorate of letters (jinshi) degree through the state-sponsored civil service examination system between the years 785 and 805, whereupon he was appointed to serve as a great supplicator (taizhu)—that is, a specialist in delivering prayers at the imperial ancestral temples—for the Court of Imperial Sacrifices at the capital, Chang’an. He subsequently was promoted to serve as an assistant (bishu lang) in the Palace Library. However, bureaucratic service ultimately figured far less prominently in Zhang Ji’s legacy than did his enduring reputation as a poet. More than any other skill, his facility at composing poetry garnered him the attention of and brought him into association with several of the premiere literary stylists of his day, including the eminent official and essayist Han Yu (768-824), who became one of Zhang Ji’s most ardent recommenders and promoters. Indeed, so skilled was Zhang Ji reputed to have been at recreating the “ancient form” (guti) verse reminiscent of the times of the early or Western Han dynasty (206 BCE-CE 9), that numerous contemporaries who achieved at least modest fame are said to have borne his direct influence.

Translated from the Chinese by Don J. Wyatt. Zhang Ji, Kunlun’er (The Black Slaves) in Quan Tangshi (Complete Tang Poetry), ed. Peng Dingqiu et al. (Taipei: Fuxing shuju, 1961), 6.6.4.9. This translation CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

The Black Slaves

Home to the Kunlun is amidst the isles of the Southern Sea[1]; Yet, led forth by Mân merchants, they have now come to roam Han lands.[2] Parrots and cockatoos must have taught them speech, As, riding upon billowing waves, they first entered through the Region of Teeming Forests.[3]

Gold rings once dangled luridly from their ears; With conch-spiraled hair, long and coiling, they still refuse to bind their heads. Prideful of their flesh and skin that is as black as lacquer[4]; Half-stripped of kapok garments or furs, they stride about with bodies exposed.[5]

[1] The body of water here referred to the “Southern Sea” is today’s South China Sea.

[2] Although also representing a specific aggregation of tribal peoples, “Mân” is an exonym customarily used by Chinese as a collective designation of disparagement and applied, since earliest times, to all non-Chinese and hence barbarous inhabitants of the directional geographic south. “Han” is, by contrast, a self-reference to China’s dominant and geographically center-occupying ethnic group, which then just as now constitutes a preponderant majority of the overall population.

[3] The “Region of Teeming Forests” is a literal reference to Yulinzhou, in coastal Guangxi province.

[4] The literal term appearing for “prideful” is “self-loving” or “self-cherishing” (ziai). I thank Shao-yun Yang of Denison University for his insights on this as well as certain other finer elements of this translation, resulting here in a version that surpasses in accuracy one previously published.

[5] Also called Java cotton, kapok is the silky down that invests the seeds of a silk-cotton tree (ka·pok tree) Ceiba pentandra, of the East Indies, Africa, and the tropical Americas. Kapok is used today for stuffing commodities like pillows and life jackets and for acoustical insulation.

Discussion Questions

  1. What does Zhang Ji’s attributing of the ferrying of the Kunlun into China to the Mân suggest about the extent of development of conventions of slavery on the part of this latter group? Are there any clues in Zhang Ji’s poem that are perhaps suggestive of his knowledge these conventions?
  2. What does Zhang Ji’s association of the Kunlun with parrots and cockatoos suggest about the Chinese association of barbarity with animality? What does it implicitly suggest about the possible premium that the Chinese might have placed on linguistic intelligibility as an internal cultural attribute? In other words, among the Chinese, how important might language have been construed at that time as a cultural marker and definer of one’s own identity?
  3. How would you characterize the poet Zhang Ji’s response to the self-possessed confidence of the Kunlun? Is he confounded? Astounded? Incredulous? Envious?

Related Primary Sources

Themes

Agency, Race, Trade