Introduction to Long Hair Poetry

This is a song in which the queens of the Yin and Shang dynasties offered sacrifices to Chengtang and his ancestors, and also used Yiyin as a sacrifice. Its content mainly praises Cheng Tang and recounts the achievements of the previous kings. The poem portrays the image of Cheng Tang, the founder of the Shang Dynasty. The whole poem has epic elements. The language of the poem is neat and symmetrical, the content is condensed and concentrated, and it has a strong sense of rhythm. It should be the origin of the antithesis in later Chinese poetry. The Book of Songs is the first collection of poems in the history of Chinese literature. It had a profound impact on the development of poetry in later generations and became the source of the realist tradition of Chinese classical literature.