China's ancient poetry can be roughly divided into two categories: one is called archaic poetry (or "ancient style"), which began in the Tang Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, the new metrical poems that appeared at that time were called modern poems, while those that originated from less metrical restrictions before the Tang Dynasty were called ancient poems. Following the viewpoint of the Tang Dynasty, later generations called Yuefu folk songs, poems written by scholars before and after the Tang Dynasty "archaic poems". There are four words (such as The Book of Songs), five words (such as Han Yuefu), seven words (such as Cao Pi's Ge Yanxing) and miscellaneous words (such as Li Bai's Shu Dao Nan). The rhyme of ancient poetry is relatively free. The other is called modern poetry (or "modern poetry"), which is a new style of poetry that appeared in the Tang Dynasty.
There are two kinds of modern poetry, one is called "quatrains", each with four sentences, which are abbreviated as five words and seven words. The other is called "metrical poem", with eight sentences each, five short words and seven short words, and those with more than eight sentences are called "metrical poem".