Ci poems are a literary form with a distinctive style and aesthetic value. Li Qingzhao ( 1084-1151 ?), in her essay “On Ci Poems,” argued that ci poems are different from other poems in that ci poems focus on expressing one’s emotions and convey musical beauty. She made a detailed analysis of the similarities and differences between ci poems and poems of other style. Ci poems were divided into level and oblique tones and stressed rhymes like other poems. However, ci poems pursued the beauty of melody and tune, that is, the beauty of music, not just beauty in form. Ci poems required that the combination of words and sounds as well as the rhyme and pronunciations of words should be suitable for singing according to scores. Thus, the ci poets mostly relied on their experiences and repeatedly chanted their ci poems until the ci poems they wrote conveyed musical beauty. This particular feature faded as ci poems became a distinct poetic genre no longer associated with music. This concept in ci poetry is mainly directed against Northern Song Dynasty poet Su Shi’s ( 1037-1101 ) view of writing ci poems in a general poetic style, blurring the boundary between poetry and lyrics. However, her views are still instructive for today’s songwriters.

Yan Shu, Ouyang Xiu, and Su Shi were well versed in the divine principles and they also had a good understanding of worldly affairs. So for them, composing such lyrics was as easy as scooping water from the sea with a ladle. But how come the ci poems they wrote appeared like unrefined poems and were often not in tune? The reason is that poetry and prose are divided into only two tones – the level and oblique tones, while ci poems use five tones – gong (宫, corresponding roughly to 1 in the numbered musical notation), shang (商, corresponding to 2), jue (角, corresponding to 3), zhi (徵, corresponding to 5), and yu (羽, corresponding to 6); as well as five other tones – the level tone (阴平), the rising tone (阳平), the falling-rising tone (上声), the falling tone (去声) and the checked tone (入声), and six different rhythms – huangzhong (黄钟), taicu(太簇), guxian (姑洗), ruibin (蕤宾), yize (夷则), and wuye (无射). It also included voiceless sound, voiced sound, unstress and accent. (Li Qingzhao: On Ci Poems）

Wang Anshi and Zeng Gong wrote essays in the style of those of the Western Han Dynasty. However, if they wrote ci poems in this style, people who read them would laugh their heads off. Thus, people know that ci poems are written in another style, but few know what this style is. (Li Qingzhao: On Ci Poems)