Poetry
Folk songs flourished in both regions. In the South, popular love songs, originating in the coastal areas, which now came increasingly under Chinese political and cultural domination, attracted the attention of poets and critics. The songs of the North were more militant. Reflecting this spirit most fully is the Mulanshi (“Ballad of Mulan”), which sings of a girl who disguised herself as a warrior and won glory on the battlefield.
Soon the number of writers of “literary” poetry greatly increased. Among them, two poets deserve special mention. Cao Zhi (3rd century), noted for his ethereal lyricism, gave definite artistic form to the poetry of the five-syllable line, already popularized in folk song. Tao Qian (4th–5th centuries), also known as Tao Yuanming, is one of China’s major poets and was the greatest of this period. A recluse, he retired from a post in the bureaucracy of the Jin dynasty at age 33 to farm, contemplate nature, and write poetry. His verse, written in a plain style, was echoed by many poets who came after him. Using several verse forms with seemingly effortless ease—including the fu, for Guiqulai ci (“Homeward Bound”)—he was representative of the trend of the age to explore various genres for lyrical expression. One of his best-loved poems is the following gushi, translated by Arthur Waley; it is one of 12 he wrote at different times after he had been drinking.
I built my hut in a zone of human habitation,
Yet near me there sounds no noise of horse or coach.
Would you know how this is possible?
A heart that is distant creates a wilderness round it.
I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge,
Then gaze long at the distant hills.
The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day;
The flying birds two by two return.
In these things there lies a deep meaning;
Yet when we would express it, words suddenly fail us.
Articles from Britannica encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.
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Chinese literature - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
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People from different parts of China sometimes cannot understand each other’s speech, but they all can read Chinese literature. That is because the Chinese language is written using thousands of complicated characters that stand for things or ideas instead of sounds. Chinese is one of the world’s oldest written languages, with a history dating back more than 3,000 years.
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Chinese literature - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
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China is the only country in the world with a literature written in one language for more than 3,000 consecutive years. This continuity results largely from the nature of the written language itself. In a Western language such as English, the letters stand for sounds that make up words, so the written language is closely tied to the spoken language. This is not the case in Chinese. The characters in written Chinese stand for words or parts of words on the basis of meaning, not sounds. Thus, people in all parts of the country have been able to read Chinese in spite of gradual changes in pronunciation and the emergence of different regional and local spoken dialects and languages. Because the written characters have tended to keep the language stable, Chinese never developed into distinctly separate written languages as did Latin in southern Europe with the formation of the several Romance languages. Today, there are many different forms of spoken Chinese, but they all share the same written language. (See also China, "Chinese Language").
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