The Songs of the South
Modern Chinese translation by Yang Shuan
English translation by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang
Published by Foreign Languages Press, 2001
Paperback: 175 pages; Dimensions (inch): 0.06 x 8.00 x 5.06
ISBN: 7119028227

This book contains Qu Yuan's Li Sao, the Lady of Xiang, Mourning the Lost Capital, and the Owl by Jia Yi, each poem with the comment on the title and illustration, the ancient poem in original text with footnotes, modern Chinese translation, and English translation.

By the 4th century B.C. China's boundaries had expanded to include the vast area of the Yangtze river valley, where the strong State of Chu became even stronger. This region is very fertile and the life of the inhabitants was more highly developed than that of the northern people. They produced their own type of song, a representative collection of which was compiled under the name of Chu Ci or The Songs of Chu. The representative poet is Qu Yuan, who wrote many excellent poems in his life, a large number of which were composed in his exile. The style of Qu Yuan's poems is different from that of The Book of Songs. It is called "poetic prose of Chu", or "the Sao style", in the history of Chinese literature. Southern poetry is different from the northern poetry styles both in verse (the verse divider xi ?, a particle expressing sighing) and in content. The northern literature is much more plain of feelings, while the poems in the southern state of Chu are full of sentiment and even mystical visions. Southern poetry later became very popular among Taoists that also saw man as a mere small being the cosm and nature.