The term means to put forth one’s thoughts in a clear and concise way when speaking and writing. Confucius (551-479BC) opposed excessive efforts in pursuit of extravagant writing styles. He stressed that writings need only to express one’s ideas and feelings clearly and precisely, and he advocated a concept of aesthetics that valued the combination of elegance and simplicity. This concept was successively inherited and developed by Liu Xie ( 465 ?- 520 ? or 532 ?), Han Yu (768-824 ), Su Shi (1037-1101), and others, resulting in a Chinese literary style that strives for natural and pithy expression as opposed to extravagant embellishment.