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The Soul’s Return | Chu Ci · Zhao Hun

When the Ancient Voices of Chu Become Songs Again

“Return, O soul! How sorrowful is the land south of the Yangtze.”

More than two thousand years ago, a voice called for a wandering soul to return. Its echoes have survived in the ancient poetry of Chu Ci, a collection that preserves some of the most extraordinary literary expressions of the Chu cultural world.

In the summer of 2025, while setting the poems of Chu Ci to music, I entered the mysterious world of Zhao Hun (招魂, Summoning the Soul). The poem begins with a declaration of personal integrity before turning to a divine command: the deity orders the shaman Wu Yang to summon a wandering soul home. The journey that follows moves through terrifying landscapes, magnificent chambers, fragrant plants, elaborate banquets, and finally the sorrowful rivers of the south.

Using artificial intelligence, I created five musical interpretations of Zhao Hun, following the sequence of the original text. These compositions are not reconstructions of ancient Chu music. They are contemporary experiments in bringing classical Chinese literature back into the world of audible expression.

I. Summoning the Soul: The Spiritual World of Ancient Chu

In the spiritual imagination of ancient Chu, shamans sought to communicate across the boundaries separating human beings, spirits, heaven, and the underworld. Rituals, divination, and invocations offered ways of approaching forces that could not be seen or controlled.

Zhao Hun reflects this worldview through the figure of Wu Yang. When commanded to summon the soul, the shaman expresses hesitation and concern about the difficulties and timing of the ritual. Only then does the elaborate invocation begin.

The authorship of Zhao Hun remains disputed. Wang Yi, in his Chu Ci Zhang Ju, attributed the work to Song Yu, while Sima Qian associated it with Qu Yuan. These differing traditions have continued to shape discussions of the poem’s origins and historical background.

Yet the literary power of Zhao Hun does not depend entirely on resolving its authorship. Its central question is strikingly human: How can a wandering soul be persuaded to return?

The poem offers two contrasting answers. First, it describes the terrifying dangers awaiting the soul beyond its familiar world. Then it presents the beauty, comfort, music, and pleasures of the place to which the soul is being summoned. The soul is not merely ordered to return. It is given reasons to desire its return.

II. Five Songs, Five Stages of the Soul’s Journey

In 2025, I divided Zhao Hun into five musical compositions, preserving the narrative progression of the original poem.

1. The Divine Command | The Beginning of the Summoning

The first composition introduces the divine command and the shaman Wu Yang. His hesitation establishes the difficulty of the task and prepares the listener for the extraordinary journey that follows. The summoning begins not with certainty, but with an awareness of the fragile boundary between the living and the departed.

2. The Four Directions | A World Without Refuge

The second composition explores the dangers surrounding the wandering soul. In the east, scorching suns threaten destruction. The south contains frightening creatures, the west offers deadly sands, and the north is dominated by bitter cold. Even heaven and the underworld present terrifying obstacles. Every direction seems to deny the soul a safe resting place.

3. The Fragrant Residence | A Home Worth Returning To

After the threatening landscapes, the poem turns towards beautiful architecture, ornamental pools, fragrant plants, curtains, and precious decorations. The atmosphere changes from fear to invitation. Home is no longer simply a geographical destination. It becomes a place of familiarity, comfort, beauty, and belonging.

4. The Endless Banquet | The Pleasures of Human Life

The fourth composition enters a world of elaborate food, wine, music, entertainment, and games. Instruments sound, guests gather, and the pleasures of earthly life unfold. These descriptions also offer literary glimpses of the material culture imagined within the Chu world. Archaeological discoveries from Chu tombs, including lacquerware, silk textiles, bells, drums, and zithers, provide valuable evidence of the artistic and technological achievements of the period. Nevertheless, the poem’s luxurious scenes should not be treated as descriptions of everyday life shared by all members of Chu society.

5. The Southern Lament | The Return to Jiangnan

The final composition follows the concluding section of the poem, traditionally called the luan. The scene shifts towards a springtime journey and a royal hunt in the Yunmeng region, before turning to rivers, maple trees, distant landscapes, and overwhelming sorrow.

The poem ends with the haunting words: “Hun xi gui lai, ai Jiangnan.” — “Return, O soul! Alas for Jiangnan.”

After all the magnificent chambers, delicious food, music, and celebration, the final image is not one of triumph. It is an expression of grief. The more splendid the imagined world becomes, the more poignant its final sorrow appears.

III. From Ancient Poetry to Modern Sound: The Meaning of Return

What makes Zhao Hun remarkable is the relationship between fear and belonging. The poem first describes a world in which the wandering soul cannot find safety. It then constructs a beautiful place to which the soul might wish to return. Through this contrast, the idea of home acquires emotional and spiritual significance.

Home is not simply the place from which a journey begins. It is also a place shaped by memory, attachment, and the fear of losing what once seemed familiar.

The poem’s descriptions of architecture, gardens, clothing, food, music, and entertainment offer a rich literary vision of the Chu cultural world. These images can be considered alongside archaeological discoveries, while recognising the difference between poetic imagination and historical evidence.

Yet the conclusion introduces a deeper uncertainty. The river continues to flow. Maple trees stand along its banks. Spring has returned, but the poem’s final words remain filled with sorrow. Perhaps returning does not necessarily resolve the experience of separation. Perhaps the most difficult question is not whether a soul can return, but whether the place it returns to can still be called home.

A Note on the Musical Experiment

Creating these five compositions was far more difficult than I had expected. In the summer of 2025, I used Suno to transform the classical Chinese text into songs. The software repeatedly struggled with uncommon characters, archaic expressions, pronunciation, and the length of the original poem. Some passages required numerous attempts, and the resulting performances were not always linguistically perfect.

I eventually preserved five versions that I considered suitable for publication, together with the original Chinese text and subtitles. These recordings document an experiment conducted under the technological conditions of 2025. They do not claim to reproduce the sounds of ancient Chu. Their significance lies in a different possibility: literature preserved for more than two millennia can enter a new medium and become accessible through listening.

Epilogue | Return, O Soul

What moves me most deeply about Zhao Hun is not the abundance of food, wine, music, or magnificent architecture. It is the sorrow concealed behind these splendid images.

The poem begins with a declaration of integrity, moves through a divine command and the dangers of the universe, and imagines a beautiful human world awaiting the soul’s return. Yet it ends beside the rivers of Jiangnan.

More than two thousand years later, the ancient invocation has become a series of songs. The original world of Chu has disappeared, but its questions have not. What does it mean to return? Can memory preserve a homeland after its historical world has vanished? And can an ancient voice find a new existence in another person’s life?

The river continues to flow, and the maple trees have witnessed countless seasons. The voices of Chu still echo between written words and modern songs.

Perhaps the one who finally returns is no longer the same person who once departed.

Across Civilizations

King Kaolie of Chu Asks: “Who Is Summoning Whom?”

One winter evening in 2026, I opened the five musical compositions of Zhao Hun that I had created the previous year. The ancient words filled the room once again. “Return, O soul!”

King Kaolie of Chu put down his bamboo slips and looked suspiciously at my computer screen. “Lady Lingyin, who is summoning souls here? Has something happened to my kingdom again?”

I burst into laughter. “Your Majesty, your kingdom disappeared more than two thousand years ago. These are five songs I composed last year using Zhao Hun. I am now bringing them together in an article.”

Huang Xie, Lord Chunshen, leaned closer and listened for a while. “Lady Lingyin, these sounds are certainly unusual. But whom is this poem actually trying to summon?”

I pointed towards the ancient Chinese characters on the screen. “In 2025, I simply wanted the poetry of Chu to be heard again. I never expected that this musical experiment would eventually lead me deeper into the history of your kingdom.”

King Kaolie suddenly became serious. “There is something I do not understand. If the soul has wandered away, why not simply command it to return? Why prepare such an extravagant banquet?”

Huang Xie smiled and answered before I could speak. “Your Majesty, even a wandering soul might refuse to obey a command. Surely we must remind it that there are still things in the human world worth travelling a thousand miles to return to.”

The king considered this for a moment, then looked towards the window. “But when I listened to the end, all that remained was a river and maple trees. After such magnificent banquets and celebrations, why does the poem conclude with sorrow for Jiangnan?”

The room fell silent.

Huang Xie gently turned the bamboo slips in his hands. “Lady Lingyin, you have lived in Germany for many years, yet you continue searching for traces of ancient Chu. Are you calling the people of Chu back to life, or are their stories calling you?”

I hesitated, then smiled. “That is a difficult question. I originally believed that I was summoning the past. Yet every time I finish an article, I seem to encounter another story from your world.”

King Kaolie finally laughed. “Then I have one more question for Lady Lingyin. You have composed so many songs for the people of Chu and written so many articles about their history. But has your own soul found somewhere to return to?”

I looked out into the German night and, for a moment, did not know how to answer.

The music from the computer gradually faded. King Kaolie picked up his bamboo slips again. Huang Xie looked at me and smiled. No one mentioned the question again.

More than two thousand years have passed since the world of ancient Jiangnan. I now live in another land, far from the rivers and landscapes that once belonged to Chu. Am I the one calling the people of Chu, or are their voices drawing me back, again and again, into their history?

Return, O soul. Alas for Jiangnan.

Perhaps true return does not mean travelling back to a particular place. Perhaps it means allowing a voice that has long been forgotten to resonate once more through another human being.

Historical and literary note: The conversations in “Across Civilizations” are fictional literary dialogues featuring King Kaolie of Chu, Huang Xie (Lord Chunshen), and Lady Lingyin. They are imaginative reflections on the themes of this essay, not historical accounts of actual conversations.