Yu Fu


"Yu Fu" or "The Fisherman" is a short work anthologized in the Chu Ci. Rather, "Yu fu" is a biographical or pseudobiographical account of an incident in poet and scholar Qu Yuan's life. It is mostly in prose, but with a short, incidental verse known as "the fisherman's song". This song, and the accompanying prose description of Qu Yuan's encounter with a fisherman during his exile are well known in Classical Chinese literature. Furthermore, "Yu fu" represents a common motif: the story of the encounter between a scholar and a fisherman also appears in the Zhuangzi, chapter 31, as an encounter between Confucius and a fisherman. There are a number of other Daoist parables of a similar nature; and, the fisherman's song itself appears in identical form in the Mencius, but there put into the mouth of a child, instead of an old fisherman.