“Richness dwells in vintage simplicity and nuanced profundity in serene composure.” This is how Northern Song writer Su Shi (1037-1101) praised the poetic style of Wei Yingwu (737?-791) and Liu Zongyuan (773-819). Such insistence on the supremacy of simplicity and composure reflects Su Shi's view about poetry and is an important aesthetic conception of ancient China. “Great music is soundless, and great image is hard to trace,” Laozi wrote in his Dao De Jing. This shows Laozi's high esteem for simple and natural beauty, which is the source of Su Shi's aesthetic view.

Although there are other poets after Li Bai and Du Fu, they were hardly able to reach a height required to express the content of their poems. Few had the ingenious quality of their poetic predecessors. Only Wei Yingwu and Liu Zongyuan far exceeded others, because in their poetry, rich delicacy dwells in vintage simplicity and nuanced profundity in serene composure. (Su Shi: Postscript to Selected Poems of Huang Zisi)