Fu originated from Chu Ci and inherited the tradition of satire in The Book of Songs. Regarding the difference between poetry and Fu, Lu Ji, a writer in Jin Dynasty, once said in "Wen Fu" that poetry is beautiful because of emotion and delicate because of body. In other words, poetry is used to express subjective feelings and should be written beautifully and delicately; Fu is used to describe objective things, and it should be written clearly and smoothly. Lu Ji was from the Jin Dynasty. His ci shows the main characteristics of poetry and fu before Jin Dynasty, but it cannot be copied mechanically. Poetry should also write things, and fu also has lyrical elements. Especially in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, lyric fu developed and changed from content to form.
The first person to use the word "Fu" as a style should push Sima Qian. During the reign of Emperor Wendi of Han Dynasty, The Book of Poetry became a Confucian Classics. In this context, it is extremely inappropriate to call Qu Yuan's works poems. However, Qu Yuan's works can only be read but not sung, and it is not appropriate to call them "songs". So Sima Qian chose two names: Ci and Fu. However, he still prefers to use words to name Qu Yuan's works, because Qu Yuan's works are rich in literary talent. The works of Song Yu, Le Tang and Jing Ke are called "Fu". What really calls one's work Fu is. Then at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, literati often wrote their own works in the name of "Fu". The name "Fu" was first seen in Xun Kuang's Fu Pian at the end of the Warring States Period. The original poems and songs can be sung, but Fu can't, so he can only recite them. It looks like prose with poetic rhythm, which is a style between poetry and prose.
Fu is a marginal style between poetry and prose, and between poetry and prose, Fu is closer to poetic style. From the Han Dynasty to the early Tang Dynasty, Fu was closer to poetry than prose. From the perspective of subject matter, the subject matter of Chu Ci works is relatively simple, and most of them are "sad people don't meet." Moreover, its form is relatively fixed, and they all imitate Qu Yuan's works and write their own misfortunes and troubles like Qu Yuan. The extravagant decorations in Qu Yuan's Evocation of Soul have a great influence on Han Da Fu. Fu has a strong literati flavor since its birth, which is the reason why it is deeply influenced by Chu Ci. Sao style fu mostly adopts the metaphor of "vanilla beauty" in Chu Ci, and often follows the metaphor of Chu Ci.