In ancient poetry, five words are quatrains.

Five-character quatrains are one of the genres of Chinese poetry, which belongs to one kind of quatrains, that is, five-character four-sentence short poems that conform to the norms of metrical poetry, and belong to the category of modern poetry.

There are two squares, one is convex and the other is horizontal. This style originated from Yuefu poems in the Han Dynasty and was deeply influenced by folk songs in the Six Dynasties. In the Tang Dynasty, it was like a twin sister with modern regular poetry, and it appeared in the poetry circle with brand-new brilliance.

Five-word quatrains but twenty crosses can show a fresh picture and convey a true artistic conception. Seeing the big because of the small, there are always many small ones, and short chapters contain rich content, which is its biggest feature. Representative works include Li Bai's Thoughts on a Quiet Night, Liu Zongyuan's Jiang Xue, Wang Wei's Bird Watching Creek, Du Fu's Eight Arrays, Wang Zhihuan's In the Heron Tower, Liu Changqing's Farewell Master and Yan Jiangdong's Thoughts on Clouds.