She is the 'wild-goose-alighting' beauty of
沉鱼落雁. The migrating geese were said to forget to flap and fall from the sky when they saw her playing the pipa on her journey north.
出塞 ('going beyond the frontier') became a poetic shorthand for her story, seen in Tang poet Du Fu's
《咏怀古迹》 and countless operas.
