Chinese literature

The earliest written records in Chinese date from about 1500 BC; the earliest extant literary works date from about 800 BC.

Poetry Chinese poems, often only four lines long, and written in the ancient literary language understood throughout China, consist of rhymed lines of a fixed number of syllables, ornamented by parallel phrasing and tonal pattern. The oldest poems are contained in the Book of Songs (800–600 BC). Some of the most celebrated Chinese poets are the nature poet T'ao Ch'ien (372–427), the master of technique Li Po (705–762), the autobiographical Bo Zhu Yi (772–846), and the wide-ranging Su Tung-p'o (1036–1101); and among the moderns using the colloquial language under European influence and experimenting in free verse are Hsu Chih-mo (1895–1931), and Pien Chih-lin (1910– ).

Prose Histories are not so much literary works as collections of edited documents with moral comment, whereas the essay has long been cultivated under strict rules of form and style. An example of the latter genre is ‘Upon the Original Way’ by Han Yü (768–824), recalling the nation to Confucianism. Until the 16th century the short story was confined to the anecdote, startling by its strangeness and written in the literary language – for example, the stories of the poetic Tuan Ch'eng-shih (died 863); but after that time the more novelistic type of short story, written in the colloquial tongue, developed by its side. The Chinese novel evolved from the street storyteller's art and has consequently always used the popular language. The early romances Three Kingdoms, All Men Are Brothers, and Golden Lotus are anonymous, the earliest known author of this genre being Wu Che'ng-en (c. 1505–1580); the most realistic of the great novelists is Ts'ao Chan (died 1763).

Twentieth-century Chinese novels have largely adopted European form, and have been influenced by Russia, as have the realistic stories of Lu Hsün. In typical Chinese drama, the stage presentation far surpasses the text in importance (the dialogue was not even preserved in early plays), but there have been experiments in the European manner. Some recent writing such as the stories of Bai Hua (1930– ) has been energized by the tension between humanist individualism and the collectivist ideology of the communist state. Personal and family experience of China's social and political upheavals in the 20th century has been recorded in some distinguished autobiographical works such as Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991) by Jung Chang (1952– ).