詩經 (Book of Songs)

About

The Shijing (Classic of Poetry, c. 1000-600 BCE) is the oldest anthology of Chinese poetry and one of the Five Confucian Classics: 305 poems of folk song, court ceremonial verse, and narrative ballad compiled from the Zhou dynasty. Confucius himself reportedly edited the collection and used it as a moral and political text. The folk songs — love songs, harvest songs, laments for absent soldiers — have a directness and beauty that has never been surpassed in Chinese lyric poetry, and the classic has been the foundation of Chinese literary education for 2500 years.