Dayan River is an autobiographical poem and a hymn of the working people. Through the reminiscence and praise of Dayan River, the painful life of farmers in old China and the image of hardworking, strong and kind rural women are truly portrayed.
Dayanhe lives as a nanny and maid of the landlord's house and engages in all kinds of labor. The poem uses seven parallelism sentences of "You" and six parallelism sentences of "She is smiling". Through the detailed description of Dayan and working all day, she vividly shows her kind and generous character, and reveals how she "deeply loves her breasts" and makes the image of a working woman more perfect.
Finally, when she died with tears in her eyes, she "shared a coffin with four yuan and several bundles of straw, and the coffin was buried a few feet", which reflected the tragic fate of farmers in the old society.
Poetry influence
This poem expresses sincere and warm feelings with real, delicate and vivid characters and amorous life details. The lyric poem of this novel was praised by many critics immediately after it was published. Hu Feng called Ai Qing a "flute-playing poet" for the first time in China, saying that "he sang his own life, but it is still a corner we can feel".
Mao Dun pointed out that it "wrote in detail the life pains of wet nurses and maids in a gloomy style", surpassing the apprentices' pains of working people in the past. Zhu Ziqing and Wen Yiduo also appreciate and admire Ai Qing's poems. Dayan River is not only Ai Qing's famous work, but also developed in the creation of new poems.