“Ci” is a form of poetry originated in the Tang Dynasty and fully developed in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Ever since Ci became popular, other forms of poetry didn’t disappear; they went forward in parallel with Ci. Ci was more closely linked with music than poetry. Music was very developed in Tang. History books said, “Starting from the Kaiyuan period, singers also sang foreign and folk songs.” That is to say that after the “Flourishing Tang” period, foreign and folk songs was quite popular beside the traditional music. Some of the new songs had their own verses. We can say that the earliest Ci came from folk songs. The verses adopted by Tang singers were mostly “Lu Shi” and “Jue Ju” written by scholars, yet these poems could not appropriately match the enriched and developed melodies, new verses had to be written. This is the so-called “filling in with verses” which had existed for a long time among the people. It was when scholars made some earnest efforts to “fill in music with verses”, such exercise became a serious activity. So, the original meaning of Ci is the verses for melodies. From the “曲子词，Qu Zi Ci, Words for Musical Notations” which was discovered at Dunhuang, Gansu Province, we can sees what the early folk Ci looks like. Take “菩萨蛮，Pusa Man” for an example:
枕前发尽千般愿： Zhen qian fa jin qian ban yuan:
要休且待青山烂， Yao xiu qie dai qing shan lan,
水面上秤锤浮， Shui mian shang cheng chui fu,
直待黄河彻底枯。 Zhi dai Huang He che di ku.
白日參辰现， Bai ri shen chen xian,
北斗回南面。 Bei dou hui nan mian.
休即未能休， Xiu ji wei neng xiu,
且待三更见日头。 Qie dai san geng jian ri tou.
You made one thousand vows before the pillow:
To cast me off only when the green hill is rotten,
The sliding weight of steelyard floats on the water,
Water is entirely dried up in the Yellow River.
And when stars appear during the day,
The Plough goes the southern way.
Since you can not cast me off.
You can only wait until the sun rises in the deep night.
“Pusa Man” is a title of the melody. In this Ci, six impossible things are cited to prove a passionate and unchangeable love. We can see the language used in the early folk Ci is rather slang, the feeling it conveys is straightforward. Ci was otherwise called “the remainder of poetry” or “long and short lines.”
Ci is in no way freer than poetry, even though there are long and short lines. Since it has to be matched with music scores, the tonal pattern and rhyme scheme are stricter than poetry. The relationship between Ci and music was very close. Much to our regret, we haven’t found any of the musical notations with which Ci poems we have read accompanied. We have no knowledge what so ever how Ci was sung. Today, we read Ci just like a poem; we comprehend Ci lonely from the literal sense of it.
Following are the ABC of Ci:
A. Ci is divided into “令, Ling, Order”, “引，Yin, Prelude”, “近，Jin, Near” and “慢，Man, Slow”.
“Ling” is short, usually within 58 characters. The shortest “Ling” is called “Xiao Ling, The Smaller Ling”, for instance the “16-character Ling”.
“Yin” and “Jin” are of medium length, usually between 59 to 90 characters.
“Man” is the longest, usually more than 91 characters.
B. Ci is often paragraphed into first and second halves. There are rarely 3 and 4 paragraphs. But the Smaller Ling is not paragraphed.
C. There are roughly 1,000 tunes among which 100 or so occur most frequently.
D. We don’t know the origin of the titles for most tunes. There are only records for a much smaller part. For instance “Pusa Man” was the song composed for the “Pusa Man Team” which came to Tang to offer tribute from the Female Man Kingdom. “Pusa” is believed to be female Buddha or budhisattva. Another example would be “Nian Nu Jiao”; Nian Nu was a famous female singer of Tang.
E. Rules of Ci: 1. Every tune of Ci has a set number of characters; 2. Requirement of level and oblique tones; 3. Length of lines varies, there is only one character in the shortest line, there are even 11 characters in the longest line; 4. Rhyme scheme varies. Some rhyme with the last line, some with every second or third line; 5. Antithesis is more flexible.
I shall now mention a few poets and their works. The first one to mention is Wen Tingyun (温庭筠, 812-866), a late Tang poet. His Ci was compiled into a book, which is the first anthology of Ci in China. Wen was the first scholar who wrote a great number of Ci. There are 310 Ci of his still in existence. Most of his Ci describes the life of women which include maiden girls, palace maids, and female singers and so on; some of his Ci describes how wives miss their solider or merchant husbands; some describe lotus collecting girls’ love. The following “Pusa Man” is a representative work of Wen:
小山重叠金明灭， Xiao shan chong die jin ming mie,
鬓云欲度香腮雪。 Bin yun yu du xiang sai xue.
懒起画娥眉； Lan qi hua e mei;
弄妆梳洗迟。 Nong zhuang shu xi chi.
照花前后镜， Zhao hua qian hou jing,
花面交相映。 Hua mian jiao xiang ying.
新帖绣罗襦， Xin tie xiu luo ru,
双双金鹧鸪。 Shuang shuang jin zhe gu.
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