Yi fa refers to the guidelines and criteria for prose writing advocated by Fang Bao (1668-1749) of the Qing Dynasty, which concerns content, structure, and editing. He held up the structural composition of the historical texts The Spring and Autumn Annals and Records of the Historian as examples of fine prose, and popularized them. Yi (义) refers t…
The term means the use of analogy, association, and inner sustenance in writing a poem to give implicit expression to one’s sentiments, thus enabling the poem to convey a subtle message. The term was first used by the Tang dynasty poet Chen Zi’ang(659-700). Xing (兴) means the development of inner feelings invoked by external objects, and ji (寄…
Everything comes into being by itself; it is not created or generated by heaven, void, or tangible things. The expression “spontaneous generation” rejects the concept of a creator. People have different views about the concrete circumstances of the “spontaneous generation” of things. Some believe that things which are “spontaneously generated”…