Who was the first romantic poet in the history of China? How did he die?

The first romantic poet in the history of China was Qu Yuan, a doctor of Chu State in the Warring States Period. He was called "Qu Zi" by later generations. Li Sao is the longest romantic political lyric poem in the history of ancient poetry in China. The poet described his life experience, moral character and ideal, expressed the anguish and contradiction that he was slandered to death, rebuked the fatuity of the king of Chu, the madness of the villain group and the ineffective governance of Japan, and showed the poet's fighting spirit of adhering to the ideal of "beautiful politics", attacking the dark reality, not colluding with evil forces and his patriotic enthusiasm to death. Ancient myths and legends are widely used in the poem, and through imagination and association, a magnificent and peculiar fantasy world is formed, which also shows the poet's roaming in the fantasy world and his enthusiastic pursuit of ideals. The metaphor of "vanilla beauty" is widely used in the poem, and the profound content is expressed with the help of concrete and vivid artistic images, which is of great artistic charm. Li Sao has a profound and realistic positive romantic spirit, which has a far-reaching influence on later generations.

According to Records of the Historian Biographies of Qu Yuan and Jia Sheng, Qu Yuan advocated the promotion of talents and empowerment, and made the country rich and persuaded the Qin Dynasty, which was strongly opposed by the nobles. Qu Yuan was expelled from the capital and exiled to the Yuanxiang Valley. During his exile, he wrote immortal poems such as Li Sao, Tian Wen and Tian Wen, which have a unique style and far-reaching influence (therefore, the Dragon Boat Festival is also called the Poet's Day). In 278 BC, Qin Jun conquered Kyoto of Chu. Seeing that his motherland was invaded, Qu Yuan was heartbroken, but he was always reluctant to give up his motherland. On May 5th, after writing his masterpiece Huai Sha, he died in Miluo River and wrote a magnificent patriotic movement with his own life.

Legend has it that after Qu Yuan's death, the people of Chu were so sad that they flocked to the Miluo River to pay homage to Qu Yuan. The fisherman paddled the boat and fished for his real body back and forth on the river. A fisherman took out rice balls, eggs and other foods prepared for Qu Yuan and threw them into the river, saying that ichthyosaurs, shrimps and crabs were full and would not bite the doctor. People followed suit after seeing it. An old doctor took an altar of realgar wine and poured it into the river, saying that he would stun the dragon water beast with medicine so as not to hurt Dr. Qu. Later, people were afraid that rice balls would be eaten by dragons, so they came up with the idea of wrapping rice with neem leaves and then wrapping it with colored silk to make it develop into brown seeds.

After that, every year on the fifth day of May, there is the custom of rowing dragon boats, eating zongzi and drinking realgar wine. In memory of the patriotic poet Qu Yuan.