Make a comment on Yuan Mei's writing style.

The characteristic of Yuan Mei's poems is that he can express his spirituality. His brushstrokes are quite extensive, reflecting reality, praising the past, describing mountains and rivers and expressing personal interests. Most of them are not bound by traditional concepts and authentic styles. They are handy, admire new things, and are competitive and do not always conform to the rules. Moreover, it is lively and wonderful, with the characteristics of unrestrained emotion, novel discussion, vivid metaphor, fluent language and skillful syntax, and it is innovative in content and form.

For example, the second part of Ma Wei: Don't sing the everlasting regret of that year, the world also has its own galaxy. In Shihao Village, the husband and wife say goodbye and shed more tears than in the Palace of Eternal Life. This poem compares Bai Juyi's Song of Eternal Sorrow with Du Fu's Shi Quguan, and turns the tragedy of the imperial concubine into the tragic parting of the common people's husband and wife, revealing new ideas and infiltrating deep sympathy for the people's sufferings.

Yuan Mei is good at sightseeing, and his landscape writing is like a model mountain meeting water, with extraordinary dreams and unrestrained pen and ink. Other small poems are good at freshness and dexterity, such as Moss: each has its own artistic conception, and love changes with the canal. Qingsi asked Hongye, What is the sunset? This very simple sketch contains appreciation and praise for the diversity of natural life.

These poems are also like what he said: "Only ordinary words are regarded as poems." No matter in content or form, Yuan Mei's poems have historical traces of evolution to modern literature.

-from the fourth volume of the second edition of the History of China Literature, edited by Yuan Xingpei.