Cai Yan,daughter of Cai Yong,was a renowned poet in the Eastern Han Dynasty.After Cai Yan's husband Wei Zhongdao had passed away,she went back to her parents' home because she had not managed to bear any children.She was captured during the Hun Invasion (194-195 A.D.),and stayed in captivity for twelve years,during which time she married a Hun and gave birth to two children.Cao Cao,out of respect and gratitude for his long time friend Cai Yong,offered to redeem Cai Yan with much money and married her off to Dong Si.Throughout this period Cai Yan had much grievance about her whole life,hence this poem for remembrance.There were speculations that three poems should be attributed to Cai Yan,namely two versions of 'Beifen Shi' and 'Hujia Shibapai'.As the content and diction of 'Hujia Shibapai' were very close to Cai Yan's sentiments and thoughts,many have argued that she was the real author.Subsequently,there were more poets adopting the same title 'Hujia Shibapai',such as Liu Shang in the Tang Dynasty,Wang Anshi,Li Gang and Wen Tianxiang in the Song Dynasty.The 'Jiju Poem' written by Wang Anshi,also known as the 'lines collection poems',are 'fast paced','good in antithetic parallelism' and 'better than the original'.Wang's writing style of lines collection poems is identified as 'Jinggong Ti',and his version of 'Hujia Shibapai' is considered one of his most remarkable works and is known for its uniqueness.Li Gang's version of 'Hujia Shibapai' was not created to highlight the misery in Cai Yan's poem,but to express his own feelings instead.In terms of artistic achievement,Li's version of 'Hujia Shibapai' did not have a clear narrative structure.The images of the whole poem were highly concentrated,coupled with a lot of repetitive obscure literary allusions.Therefore,his version of 'Hujia Shibapai' is not as fluent as that of Cai Yan,nor as natural as that of Wang An Shi.Comparatively speaking,Wen Tian Xiang's version of 'Hujia Qu' was more musically inclined than Wang An Shi's and Li Gang's versions.Its one hundred and sixty lines were all quoted from Du Fu's poems.'Hujia Qu' combined the styles of Cai Yan and Du Fu,and mixed Wang Anshi's meticulous lines collective writing style with Li Gang's intention of 'writing poems to reproduce history'.The poem 'Hujia Qu' is thus a piece of work which integrates loyalty,love and intimacy.
As for the content of these three poems,Wan Anshi adopted an objective point of view when describing Cai Yan's life story,Li Gang did not include any historical facts about Cai Yan,and Wen Tianxiang used Cai Yan's tragic experience to describe his own turbulent and vagrant life,which renders the three poems unique in their own way.In Wang Anshi's version of 'Hujia Shibapai',he employed the first person perspective to narrate the story,and sometimes he would change to the observer's omniscient perspective.In general,his narrative tone and structure were quite similar to Cai Yan's 'Hujia Shibapai'.In Li Gang's version of 'Hujia Shibapai',the author deliberately removed the descriptions of Cai Yan's tragic life experience,and made use of the structure to narrate the history of the 'An Shi Rebellion'.Wen Tianxaing,on the other hand,encountered the same tragic experience of separation from his children as Cai Yan did, so his version of 'Hujia Qu' is characterized by his empathy.In this way,Wen Tianxiang not only portrayed a macro-historical picture,but also uttered his own endless frustrations and bitterness.
This paper aims to focus on Li Gang's and Wen Tianxiang's versions of 'Hujia Shibapai' as well as a comparison with Cai Yan's original poem.In conclusion,Li's and Wen's versions have three significant features:（1）They were a continuation of Wang Anshi's 'Hujia Shibapai' writing style,which imitated how Cai Yan narrated her tragic life experience.（2）They established the literary status of Du Fu's by setting up his poems as the classic example of lines collection poems.（3）They realized the concept of 'reproducing history by poetry' and expanded the referral meaning of the concept.