The first stanza of this ci depicts the speaker’s loneliness upon waking up in the middle of the night, focusing on concrete details of the setting. In the second stanza, unanswered questions convey the speaker’s unresolved emotional strife. It is not possible to deduce the speaker’s gender with certainty. Much turns on the interpretation of the third and fourth line of the second stanza: “The phoenix building is only a step away, yet the date to reunite is far from settled.” If we interpret this line as “the phoenix building (where I reside) is only a step away (from you), yet the date to reunite is far from settled”, then the speaker is a (female) courtesan. However, if we interpret this line as “the phoenix building (where you reside) is only a step away (from me), yet the date to reunite is far from settled”, the speaker is likely to be a man who is having an affair with a courtesan. It is interesting to observe that the language of lovesickness itself is not sufficiently gendered to identify the gender of the speaker.

Liu Yong was possibly the most widely-read ci writer in the Northern Song period, with fans ranging from courtesans to officials and critics. He excelled in writing love songs, portraying the emotions of lovelorn individuals in unprecedented detail and depth. Despite being born into a family of officials, he did not lead a successful professional life. After he failed keju, the Imperial Chinese civil service examination, he wrote the song “To the tune ‘Crane Soaring in the Sky’”, in which he claimed that ci poets are as important as prime ministers. This led the Ren Emperor of Song 宋仁宗 to personally deem him unfit for imperial service. The emperor suggested that if he really thought that way, he should just be a ci poet instead of pursuing the career of an official. The emperor went so far as to deliberately fail Liu Yong in his following attempt at the exams.

Liu Yong’s continued output of poetry, deemed frivolous, trivial and vulgar by court officials, had a lasting impact on his professional life. He did not pass the civil service exam until he was 48 years old; before that, he spent much of his time with singers and courtesans, writing ci and living a hedonistic existence. After he finally passed keju, he worked as a low rank official in several areas and sought to advance his career through the assistance of the prime minister of that time, Yan Shu, who was also a famous ci poet (and is featured in this collection). Yan Shu mocked the frivolity of Liu Yong’s lyrics and refused to assist him, and the emperor, upon learning of his attempt, commented that Liu Yong, as a ci composer, should stick to composing ci. In response to the emperor’s comment, Liu Yong, in typically rebellious fashion, began signing his ci “composer of ci by imperial decree”. He made a final attempt to salvage his career by writing a complimentary ci to the emperor, but this was regarded as offensive and the emperor stripped him of his official titles and stated that he would never be accepted back at court. From then on, he returned to his previous lifestyle, indulging in the company of singers and courtesans.

Because of his unique life experience, the sentiments expressed in Liu Yong’s ci are often very different from the views typically expressed in Chinese society at that time, with an especially cynical attitude towards serving the empire and a pronounced defense of hedonism. Nevertheless, Liu Yong’s ci were extremely popular throughout the empire, giving rise to the frequently repeated observation that “if you can see a well in a place, you can hear Liu Yong’s ci being sung there”. As every tiny town had a well, this indicates the wide reach of Liu’s lyrics.

Liu Yong is also notable for his many formal innovations to ci poetry. Before Liu, most ci were written to accompany short tunes, but he initiated a trend of writing lyrics for longer tunes, which allowed for more complex portrayals of human psychology. He was also less restrained by the tune, and often modified the traditional rhyme as well as the line breaks. For example, even when he wrote two ci to the same tune, they might sound very different from one another, with different rhymes, line lengths or numbers of lines. The tunes that Liu Yong used were also more diverse than those of his contemporaries: some were folk songs, and some he composed himself. Many of Liu Yong’s ci have a stronger narrative element, probably due to the influence of storytellers whose street performances he would have watched. Liu received considerable criticism for his focus on love and for his use of commonplace language rather than a refined poetic vocabulary, but this did little to curtail his popularity or his influence on the development of the ci genre.

Chang, Kang-i Sun. The Evolution of Tz’u Poetry: from Late Tang to Northern Sung. Princeton UP, 1980.

A standard survey of the early history of Chinese song lyrics (romanized as both ci and tz’u).

Egan, Ronald. “The Song Lyric.” The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, vol. 1, edited by Stephen Owen, Cambridge UP, 2010, pp. 434-452.

An overview of the genre.

Owen, Stephen. Just a Song: Chinese Lyrics from the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries. Asia Center, Harvard UP, 2019.

A recent new history of the genre.

Tang, Guizhang 唐圭璋, editor. Quan Song Ci 全宋詞. Zhonghua shu ju, 1965. 5 vols.

A comprehensive edition of ci from the Song dynasty and the source text for the ci in this collection (introductions and annotations are in Chinese).