ABSTRACT
Mao Xianshu is saying that in the ci one must take one’s feelings and intentions and turn them into a sort of attitude or posture. Liu Yong’s changdiao because of their length allowed more complete expression, and thus could more easily lose some of the ci’s understated, implicit aesthetic. A long shi song can manipulate qi particularly well, but this is not in the nature of the changdiao. Among haofang ci poets, only Xin Qiji and Su Shi succeeded in creating haofang ci poems that were not straightforward in expression or colloquial in their diction, but achieved a roundabout, indirect type of presentation, through which they were able to implicitly address their frustrations in life. The ci must not be the slave of fashion or trendiness. Su Shi’s contribution to making the ci more shi-like, on the other hand, was quite intentional.
