Classical Chinese poetry forms are those genres which typify the traditional Chinese poems

Chinese poetry

Chinese poetry is poetry written, spoken, or chanted in the Chinese language, which includes various versions of Chinese language, including Classical Chinese, Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Yue Chinese, as well as many other historical and vernacular varieties of the Chinese language...

 written in Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...

. Some of these genres are attested to as early as the publication of the Classic of Poetry, dating from a traditionally, and roughly, estimated time of around BCE 500, in what is now China, but at that time was composed of various independent states. The term "genres" refers to various considerations as to topic, theme, and subject matter, what similes or metaphors were considered appropriate or how they would be interpreted, and other considerations such as vocabulary and style. These genres were generally, but not always independent of the Classical Chinese poetry forms

Classical Chinese poetry forms

thumb|right|350px|Poet on a Mountaintop by [[Shen Zhou]], about 1500 CE .Classical Chinese poetry forms are those poetry forms, or modes, which typify the traditional Chinese poems written in Literary or Classical Chinese...

. Many or most of these were developed by the Tang Dynasty

Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...

 and use and development of Classical Chinese poetry genres actively continued up to until the May Fourth Movement

May Fourth Movement

The May Fourth Movement was an anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement growing out of student demonstrations in Beijing on May 4, 1919, protesting the Chinese government's weak response to the Treaty of Versailles, especially the Shandong Problem...

, in 1919, and are not totally extinct even today in the 21st century.

Landscape style poetry genre

Similarly to the classification of Chinese painting, some poetry is regarded as "landscape poetry", because it primarily utilizes images of scenes of nature. Similarly, this genre may be divided into two sub-genres: the more domestic "Fields and Gardens" and the wilder "Rivers and Mountains" (shansui shi).

Rivers and Mountains (山水)

One of the greatest exemplars of this type of poetry was Wang Wei

Wang Wei

Wang Wei , was a Tang Dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman. He was one of the most famous men of arts and letters of his time. Many of his poems are preserved, and twenty-nine were included in the highly influential 18th century anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems.-Name...

.

Fields and Gardens (田園)

Tao Qian

Tao Qian

Tao Qian , better known as Tao Yuanming , was a Chinese poet. Born in modern Jiujiang, Jiangxi, he was one of the most influential pre-Tang Dynasty Chinese poets....

, also known as Tao Yuanming, wrote poems exemplifying this form.

Frontier Fortress (邊塞)

Also known as "Beyond the Borders", this genre of Classical Chinese poetry deals with the experiences, real or imagined, of life on the edge of the Chinese empire, especially in the arid regions to the North and West, which were also subject to temperature extremes and sand and dust storms, populated with sometimes exotic and often hostile people, yet these frontier areas were important, both actually due to imperial ambitions as well as the Silk Road

Silk Road

The Silk Road or Silk Route refers to a historical network of interlinking trade routes across the Afro-Eurasian landmass that connected East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean and European world, as well as parts of North and East Africa...

 trade, as well as symbolically.

Midnight Songs poetry

Midnight Songs poetry

Midnight Songs poetry

Midnight Songs poetry , also Tzu-yeh Songs, refers both to a genre of poetry as well as to specifically collected poems under the same name, during the Fourth Century CE...

 also known as, Zi Ye

Midnight Songs poetry

Midnight Songs poetry , also Tzu-yeh Songs, refers both to a genre of poetry as well as to specifically collected poems under the same name, during the Fourth Century CE...

, or "Lady Midnight" style, supposedly originating with an eponymously-named fourth century professional singer

Sing-song girls

Sing-song girls is an English term for the courtesans in China during the early 19th century.-Origin:Prior to the founding of modern China in 1911, concubinage was legal. In Chinese custom, males carry the family name and the family's heritage after marriage...

 of the Eastern Jin dynasty.

See also

• Chinese literature, Classical poetry section
• Chinese poetry
  Chinese poetry
  Chinese poetry is poetry written, spoken, or chanted in the Chinese language, which includes various versions of Chinese language, including Classical Chinese, Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Yue Chinese, as well as many other historical and vernacular varieties of the Chinese language...
  
  
• Classical Chinese poetry
  Classical Chinese poetry
  thumb|right|300px|Attributed to [[Han Gan]], Huiyebai , about 750CE .Classical Chinese poetry is that type of poetry that is the traditional Chinese poetry written in Classical Chinese. It is typified by certain traditional forms, or modes, and certain traditional genres...
  
  
• Ci (poetry)
  Ci (poetry)
  Ci is a kind of lyric Classical Chinese poetry using a poetic meter based upon certain patterns of fixed-rhythm formal types. For speakers of English, the word "ci" is pronounced somewhat like "tsuh"...
  
  
• Classic of Poetry
• Five Classics
• Fu (poetry)
  Fu (poetry)
  Fu is a kind of rhymed prose, or poetry style essay, popular in ancient China, especially during the Han Dynasty. The term fu is often used in a multiway contrast with the more purely poetic shi style, with the fixed-rhythm forms of poetry , and with various more explicitly prosaic forms of...
  
  
• Han poetry
  Han poetry
  Han poetry refers to those types or styles of poetry particularly associated with the Han Dynasty era of China. This poetry reflects one of the poetry world's more important flowerings, as well as being a special period in Classical Chinese poetry, particularly in regard to a new style of shi...
  
  
• Jueju
  Jueju
  Jueju is a style of jintishi, or "Modern form poetry", that grew popular among Chinese poets in the Tang Dynasty , although traceable to earlier origins...
  
  
• List of Chinese language poets
• Qu (poetry)
  Qu (poetry)
  In Chinese literature, qu , or yuanqu consists of sanqu and zaju . Together with the various shi and fu forms of poetry, the ci, qu, and the other fixed-rhythm type of verse comprise the three main forms of Classical Chinese poetry.Yuanqu is a form of Chinese opera, which became popular in Yuan...
  
  
• Rime dictionary
  Rime dictionary
  thumb|upright=1.0|A page from Shiyun Hebi , a rime dictionary of the [[Qing Dynasty]]A rime dictionary, rhyme dictionary, or rime book is an ancient type of Chinese dictionary used for writing poetry or other genres requiring rhymes. A rime dictionary focuses on pronunciation and collates...
  
  
• Rime table
  Rime table
  A rime table or rhyme table is a syllable chart of the Chinese language, a significant advance on the fǎnqiè analysis used in earlier rime dictionaries...
  
  
• Shan shui
  Shan shui
  Shan shui refers to a style of Chinese painting that involves or depicts scenery or natural landscapes, using a brush and ink rather than more conventional paints. Mountains, rivers and often waterfalls are prominent in this art form.-History:...
  
  
• Tang poetry
  Tang poetry
  Tang poetry refers to poetry written in or around the time of and in the characteristic style of China's Tang dynasty, and/or follows a certain style, often considered as the Golden Age of Chinese poetry...
  
  
• Tone pattern
  Tone pattern
  Tone patterns are common constraints in classical Chinese poetry.The four tones of Middle Chinese—level , rising , departing , and entering tones—are categorized into level tones and oblique tones. All level tones are level. All other tones are oblique...
  
  
• Xiaoxiang
  Xiaoxiang
  Xiaoxiang , also transliterated XiaoXiang. Hsiao Hsiang, and Chiu Chiang, in some older sources, refers to the "lakes and rivers" region in south central China, more-or-less corresponding with Hunan, China, south of the middle-reaches of the Yangzi River. Xiaoxiang is less a precise geographic...
  
  

External links

• Chinese Wikipedia article on Shi (詩) Chinese Wikipedia article on Shi (詩)
• Chinese Poems, a collection of Chinese poems in the original Chinese, pinyin
  Pinyin
  Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
  
  and English translations
• Understand the basic forms of jintishi (regulated verse)