Ai Qing, a young man, is a realistic poet with a unique style, which has exerted an important influence on the history of China's new poetry. Most of his poems integrate personal destiny into the sufferings of the nation and the people, and convey the aspirations of the times and the people. Nie Luda, a Chilean poet, once called Ai Qing "China's master of poetry" in his memoirs.
His early poems eulogized the fate of the nation, showing a poetic style that gradually turned from melancholy to tragic and high. In 1930s and 1940s, he published poems such as Dayan River, North China, His Second Death, Sunward, Country Poetry, Anti-Fascism, Wilderness, Dawn Notice and Drilling Snow.