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Chu Ci · Jiu Zhang · Ai Ying (Lament for Ying)

When the River Carries People Away from Home

What happens when a homeland becomes a place that can no longer be reached? Is home defined by the land on which people were born, by the political community to which they belong, or by the memories they continue to carry after leaving? In Ai Ying (哀郢, Lament for Ying), traditionally attributed to Qu Yuan, these questions emerge from the experience of displacement in the ancient kingdom of Chu. A river flows eastward, carrying the traveller farther from the capital he once knew, while his thoughts continually return to the west. The journey has a geographical direction, but no certain destination that can replace what has been lost.

The poem begins not with the sorrow of an individual minister, but with the suffering of ordinary people. It is the middle of spring, a season associated with growth and renewal, yet families are being separated and communities uprooted. The contrast between the natural cycle of life and the disruption of human society gives the opening its emotional force. Political upheaval may be recorded in history through battles, rulers, and territorial changes, but its consequences are experienced through abandoned homes, broken relationships, and the uncertainty of those forced to leave. By beginning with the people of Chu, the poem places personal grief within a larger historical tragedy.

The landscape of Ai Ying is therefore more than a setting for exile. Rivers, distant shores, and the disappearing capital become expressions of a divided human experience. The body must move forward, while memory remains attached to a place that grows increasingly remote. This conflict gives the poem a significance beyond its original political circumstances. Across different periods of history, people have left their homes because of war, political upheaval, or circumstances they could not control. Even when a new life becomes possible elsewhere, the relationship between departure and belonging may remain unresolved.

I. The Lost Capital | Exile, Loyalty, and the Memory of Chu

For centuries, Ying had been one of the most important political and cultural centers of the kingdom of Chu. Commonly associated with the ancient Jinan city site near present-day Jingzhou in Hubei Province, it represented far more than the residence of a ruler. The capital was connected to the kingdom’s institutions, ancestral traditions, political ambitions, and the everyday lives of generations of inhabitants. In 278 BCE, the Qin general Bai Qi captured Ying, marking a major turning point in Chu’s history. The kingdom survived, but its political center shifted eastward, and the relationship between the Chu people and their former capital was fundamentally altered. The precise dating of Ai Ying and its relationship to these events remain debated, yet the poem belongs to a literary world deeply concerned with the consequences of political displacement.

The difference between losing a capital and losing a homeland is essential to understanding the poem. A ruler may decide to move a court, establish new administrative institutions, and construct another city. Such decisions concern the survival and governance of a state. For those who must leave, however, a homeland consists of experiences that cannot be transferred by political decree. Streets, family relationships, familiar landscapes, and the accumulated memories of ordinary life give a place its personal meaning. A new capital may serve the needs of government, but it cannot automatically restore the world that existed before departure. What is lost is not simply a location, but a particular relationship between people, place, and time.

In Ai Ying, this loss unfolds through the movement of a boat. The traveller leaves Ying and follows the waterways towards Dongting Lake and the Yangtze River. Water carries him onward without offering any assurance that he will return. The journey appears to have the freedom of movement, yet the speaker experiences it as an inability to choose where he belongs. His longing becomes more intense as the distance increases. When he turns his thoughts towards the west, the river’s eastward course becomes a visible contradiction: nature continues in one direction, while human attachment persists in another.

This is one of the poem’s most striking insights into exile. Physical movement does not necessarily produce emotional change. People may adapt to unfamiliar surroundings, learn new routes, and establish new routines, yet still remain connected to a place that no longer forms part of their daily lives. The speaker’s desire to return is not simply a refusal to accept geographical distance. It expresses the difficulty of separating identity from the experiences through which that identity was formed. The homeland becomes more than a destination on a map; it becomes part of the traveller’s understanding of himself.

For Qu Yuan, this attachment is inseparable from the political world of Chu. Ying represents the place where he had hoped to serve his ruler and contribute to the realization of his ideals. The poem portrays loyalty frustrated by jealousy, sincere counsel obstructed by slander, and a political order in which personal rivalry can outweigh moral judgment. The speaker’s suffering therefore arises from two connected forms of separation. He is removed from the homeland to which he belongs, and he is excluded from the political relationship through which he had hoped to give his convictions practical meaning. The tragedy is not merely that his ambitions have failed, but that his commitment to Chu continues even when the political world of Chu has rejected him.

Time intensifies rather than resolves this contradiction. The poem refers to nine years without returning, suggesting that the separation has become a prolonged condition of life. Over such a period, landscapes change, generations grow older, and the practical demands of living elsewhere continue. Yet the speaker’s attachment does not disappear. His inability to return makes the remembered homeland increasingly distinct from the present. Memory preserves what time has already begun to transform, creating a painful distance not only between places, but also between the life once lived and the life that remains possible.

Near its conclusion, the poem turns to images of birds returning to their native places and foxes facing the hills of their origin at death. These familiar natural images express a form of belonging that appears older and more fundamental than political authority. The desire to return does not depend on whether the homeland can offer prosperity, recognition, or even safety. It persists because the place of origin has become inseparable from the living being’s identity. The speaker’s political grievances are thus brought into contact with a more universal human experience: the need to remember where one’s life began.

This understanding becomes particularly revealing when Ai Ying is read alongside Ju Song (橘颂, Ode to the Orange Tree). The orange tree grows in the south and remains rooted in its native soil, symbolizing a character that does not abandon its essential nature. The speaker of Ai Ying faces the opposite circumstance. He cannot remain where he belongs, yet he refuses to let departure erase his attachment. One poem explores steadfastness through the possibility of remaining rooted; the other explores it through the experience of being uprooted. Together, they suggest that belonging is not determined solely by whether a person can stay in one place. It may also be preserved through the convictions and memories carried into an uncertain future.

II. Giving Ai Ying a New Voice | A River of Memory Through AI Music

On July 29, 2025, I began preparing Ai Ying for an AI-assisted musical interpretation. The process started with the classical Chinese text and its Hanyu Pinyin, which I organized for use with SUNO AI. This was part of a larger creative experiment undertaken during the summer of 2025, when I explored how works from Chu Ci might be heard through contemporary musical technology. My intention was not to rewrite Qu Yuan’s poetry into a modern song or to claim that artificial intelligence could reconstruct the music of ancient Chu. I wanted to retain the original literary language while exploring whether its emotional movement could acquire another form of expression.

Unlike a poem built around a single repeated sentiment, Ai Ying follows a changing emotional course. It begins with collective displacement, moves into the personal experience of leaving the capital, and gradually reveals the relationship between homesickness and political disappointment. The passing years deepen the sense of separation, while the images of returning birds and foxes bring the poem towards its emotional culmination. This progression offered a natural basis for musical interpretation. The challenge was to allow the listener to experience a continuous journey rather than a sequence of disconnected expressions of sorrow.

The initial musical concept was a slow, melancholy Chinese classical-inspired ballad, with traditional Chinese instruments forming part of the imagined sound. The river itself became an important creative reference. Its movement suggested continuity, while the speaker’s longing suggested a resistance to that movement. I did not want a forceful contemporary rhythm to overwhelm the poem’s sense of distance and loss. The desired atmosphere was one of sustained sadness, as though the journey might continue for a long time without reaching the place the traveller most wished to see. These were creative intentions rather than a precise description of every sound ultimately produced by SUNO.

The visual interpretation followed the same emotional direction. I imagined a solitary ancient poet beside a mist-covered river in spring, looking towards the homeland that was gradually disappearing beyond the landscape. The distant mountains, flowing water, and isolated figure expressed the central contradiction of Ai Ying: the world continues to move, while the traveller’s thoughts remain attached to what has been left behind. The resulting musical work became another part of my broader exploration of classical Chinese literature through digital creation.

Video: Chu Ci · Jiu Zhang · Ai Ying — Lament for Ying | AI Musical Interpretation | 6:19

The significance of this experiment does not depend on whether artificial intelligence can reproduce an imagined ancient musical style perfectly. Its value lies in creating another encounter with a text that has survived across centuries. Music changes the way a poem is experienced. Words that might be read quickly on a page acquire duration, pauses, and a human-like singing voice. The listener cannot reverse the river’s direction or restore the lost capital, but may experience something of the longing that gives the poem its emotional continuity.

Epilogue | What Remains When Returning Is No Longer Possible?

The idea of returning home often suggests that a journey can be completed by arriving at the place where it began. Ai Ying challenges this assumption. Even if a traveller could eventually return to the same geographical location, the world remembered from the past might no longer exist. Political institutions change, familiar people disappear, and places acquire new meanings through events that cannot be undone. The loss of a homeland is therefore not always resolved by physical return. Sometimes what has disappeared is a particular moment in history, together with the relationships and expectations that once made a place feel permanent.

This distinction helps explain why the poem’s sorrow remains meaningful beyond the history of Chu. Human beings experience belonging through more than territory. Language, familiar voices, childhood experiences, shared customs, and inherited values can all become part of the meaning of home. These elements may survive displacement, even when the physical setting in which they developed has been transformed. They do not eliminate the pain of separation, but they make it possible for memory to remain active rather than disappear with distance.

The relationship between Ju Song and Ai Ying offers two different ways of considering this continuity. The orange tree preserves its nature by remaining rooted in the southern landscape. The exiled speaker must preserve his identity without that stability. His loyalty and memory continue even though the conditions that once supported them have been lost. Neither poem suggests that remaining faithful to one’s origins guarantees happiness or political success. Instead, both examine what it means to sustain a sense of self when the surrounding world cannot be relied upon to remain unchanged.

Qu Yuan could not make the river flow backwards, nor could he restore the years before his departure. Yet the act of writing transformed his experience into something that could travel farther than the exiled poet himself. The poem preserved the memory of Ying beyond the political circumstances that gave rise to its sorrow. More than two millennia later, readers can still encounter the lost capital through its verses, and new artistic forms can carry those verses into different cultural settings. The homeland remains inaccessible to the speaker, but it has not disappeared from the literary memory of later generations.

Perhaps this is what people can carry when they cannot return: not the original place in its entirety, but the language, memories, and values through which that place continues to matter. A river can carry a person away from home, but it cannot determine what the traveller will remember. The past cannot be restored simply through longing, yet it need not vanish because the journey has continued. In Ai Ying, the river flows eastward, while the memory of the homeland survives in the words left behind.

Across Civilizations

King Kaolie, Huang Xie, and Lady Lingyin | How Many Homelands Can One Kingdom Have?

After the final notes of Ai Ying faded, King Kaolie stood before a historical map of Chu, studying the names of three cities. He turned to Huang Xie, Lord Chunshen, with a puzzled expression. “Qu Yuan mourned Ying, yet when I ruled, our capital was at Chen, and later we moved it to Shouchun. How many former capitals can one kingdom have?” Huang Xie approached the map. “Your Majesty, the kingdom survived the loss of Ying by shifting its political center eastward. New cities could accommodate the court and its institutions, but the memories of the old capital could not simply be moved along with them.”

The king was unconvinced. “If I had spent my reign mourning Ying, how could Chu have survived? Moving the capital was a political necessity, not a betrayal of our ancestors.” I looked at the map and asked, “Your Majesty, if the capital can move from one city to another, where does the homeland of the Chu people actually belong? Is it the place where the ruler governs, or the civilization that continues through these changes?” Huang Xie considered the question. “A kingdom needs a place from which to govern. Without a new capital, its future may be lost. But without the memory of its former cities, later generations may no longer understand where it came from.”

King Kaolie turned towards me. “Lady Lingyin, you have made Qu Yuan’s lament into a song. Which of us do you think is right?” I smiled. “Your Majesty, you and Lord Chunshen were concerned with preserving the kingdom’s future. Qu Yuan was concerned with preserving the memory of a homeland he could no longer reach. These are not necessarily opposing purposes. A kingdom must continue to live, but a civilization must also remember.” For a moment, the king said nothing. Huang Xie quietly folded the map, leaving the three cities visible only in our thoughts.

Chu moved its capital more than once, and each relocation formed part of its struggle to survive. Qu Yuan wrote a poem, and through that poem the memory of Ying continued long after the kingdom itself had disappeared. Political decisions could preserve a state for another generation, while literature could preserve its experience for centuries. The river on the screen continued flowing eastward. Its direction had not changed, but the homeland it carried away had found another form of existence in poetry.

Historical and literary note: This dialogue is a fictional encounter across time, inspired by Chu Ci · Jiu Zhang · Ai Ying and the history of Chu’s changing capitals. King Kaolie and Huang Xie lived after Qu Yuan. Their conversation with Lady Lingyin is a literary reflection, not a historical record.