Origins
Shi Jing (詩經 "Classic of Poetry") was the first major collection of Chinese poems, collecting both aristocratic poems (the "Odes") and more rustic poems, probably derived from folksongs (the "Songs"). They are mostly composed of four-character (四言) lines.
A second, more lyrical and romantic anthology was Chu Ci (楚辭 "Songs of Chu"), made up primarily of poems ascribed to Qu Yuan and his follower Song Yu. These poems are composed of lines of irregular lengths. However, note that the word shi does not appear in the title, but rather the character 辭 (ci, equivalent to the character 詞/词, also ci), referring to the ci genre of poetry.
From the Han Dynasty onwards, a process similar to the origins of Shi Jing produced the yuefu (樂府 "Music Bureau") poems. Many of them are composed of lines of five-character (五言) or seven-character (七言) poems. These two forms were to dominate Chinese poetry until the modern era. They are divided into the original gushi (old poems) and jintishi. The latter is a stricter form developed in the early Tang Dynasty with rules governing the structure of a poem. The greatest writers of gushi and jintishi are often held to be Li Bai and Du Fu respectively.
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