Along the riverbank, emerald grass extends into the distance;

As I follow it with my eyes my thoughts are carried far away.

It is best not to think of that faraway journey,

But in dreams she appears.

A dream-vision is sometimes by my side;

Sometimes the dream removes itself to a remote land.

In our separate places we remain,

And no twists or turns will enable us to meet again.

This is a Yuefu poem from the Eastern Han dynasty, entitled "Watering Horses by the Great Wall."

Construction was begun on the Great Wall of China in the Qin dynasty, and the Han extended it from Dunhuang to Luobu Lake. Continual wars of conquest beginning with the emperor Wu Di of the Han dynasty resulted in annual expeditions beyond the Great Wall. The poem reflects the pain of separation felt among common people swept up in these events.

Socially conscious

The earliest collection of poetry in China is the Book of Odes, from the Zhou dynasty, which dates back to 1000 BC. It is still being debated whether or not the Book of Odes was produced as the result of an effort to understand the common people by collecting their verse, but 1000 years later, at the time that is now commonly considered the start of the first millennium, the emperor of the Han dynasty did create a special state agency to collect folk verse. The name of this agency, the Yuefu (Music Bureau) eventually came to refer to the genre itself.

In the Han dynasty book Yiwen Zhi (Chronicle of the Arts), it is recorded that at least 138 examples of popular verse were collected at the time, leaving behind a rich resource for the study of folk culture in Han times. These popular songs are direct and full of vitality and emotion. Some describe departure and death in wartime; others movingly bemoan lives of grinding poverty.

One, entitled "The Dying Wife," describes a woman who had suffered from disease for many years calling her husband to her side so she can leave him with parting words. Even before she begins speaking, the tears flow like a river from her eyes: "After I'm gone I will have to leave the whole burden of taking care of the children on you. Please don't let the children suffer from cold or hunger. If they make a mistake, do not hit them or scold them. I hope you'll always bear these words in mind."

Ko Ching-ming, a professor of Chinese at National Taiwan University, suggests, "You could say that Yuefu was the pop music of that era." The verse is certainly as emotive and directly connected to people's lives as any folk music, as suggested by titles like "The Soldier's Bride," "Song of the Orphan," and "The Dying Wife." The poems themselves are realistically instructive in a warm and caring way.

The great common store of feeling of ordinary Han people gave rise to Yuefu verse. Hanfu verse, on the other hand, which derived from the tradition of the Ci songs of the ancient state of Chu, reflected an aesthetic of magnificence and elegance.

Nothing more to add

Hanfu writing displayed the descriptive and narrative powers of Han literati. Writers such as Jia Yi and Sima Xiangru of the early Han, and "trans-millennial" writers like Yang Xiong, Ban Gu, and Zhang Heng, created magnificent works. These describe the wealth and beauty of the imperial court, the prosperity of cities, the abundance of goods, the luxurious lives and entertainments of the elite, and legends of deities and spirits.

Industry flourished in Han times, and foreign merchants flocked to China to buy its goods. At the same time, they brought into the Middle Kingdom products from the cities of Central Asia, Persia, and India. The expansion of Han territory under the emperor Wu Di, combined with cultural interaction, changed the geographic perspective of Chinese people, opened their eyes to the wider world, and thereby altered their inner worlds as well.

This is the background against which the expansive and ambitious literary style of the Han took shape. Writers wrote with the elegance of a Chu poem and the sophistry of a diplomat. In tackling a subject, they endeavored to integrate virtually every possibility and use every relevant term. Their writing reflected the grandiose Zeitgeist of the Han Empire, and became the major form of Han literature.

Take for example Zixufu by Sima Xiangru. Written as a conversation among three people, in poking fun at the nobility and the emperor who spent all day hunting rather than in affairs of state, it also depicted a vast and colorful world: Sima exhausted his imagination to describe natural wonders, strange creatures and bizarre plants, presenting a dazzling and awesome spectacle.

Some people criticize Hanfu literature for being overly descriptive, and for using too much esoteric vocabulary, thus weakening its artistic capability to touch people's emotions. It became increasingly verbose and pedantic, and packed with pretentious and irrelevant terminology. With regard to this, Ko Ching-ming says that in fact Han literati were very much aware of what they were doing. Their purpose was to write in such a way that their successors could not find a single thing to add, either in content or word usage. This ambition translated into a tradition of exhaustive description, and the peak to which descriptive writing was raised is now considered a hallmark of Han literature.

Eventually of course the splendor and glory of the empire wore off, and the elegance and ambition disappeared. The Hanfu genre traveled diverse byways thereafter, becoming Xiaofu in the Wei-Jin era, being transformed again into Pingwen in the Northern and Southern dynasties era, and being carried on in the Tang and Song dynasties as Lufu and Wenfu styles. But by the close of the Song, literati were more interested in self-restraint and leisurely self-cultivation, and the Hanfu style died out. Just as Han literati would have wanted, there was apparently nothing more to be said!