Yüeh-Fu

Chinese folk songs recorded by the Yüeh Fu (Music Bureau). Several hundred texts of yüeh-fu have been preserved. They are traditionally divided into three types, which differ markedly from one another: those of the Han period (second century B.C. to third century A.D.) and the northern and southern yiieh-fu of the Six Dynasties period (fourth to sixth centuries). The yiieh-fu deal with love (particularly the southern yiieh-fu), the fleeting nature of existence (the Han yiieh-fu), war, feats of arms, and national calamities. Social protest is expressed mainly in short aphoristic songs similar to the Russian chastushki. Among the many Chinese poets who imitated the yiieh-fu are Ts’ao Ts’ao, Ts’ao P’ei, Ts’ao Chih, Lu Chi, Pao Chao, Li Po, Tu Fu, Po Chü-i, Li Ho, and Wen T’ing-yün.