'The Lament for the South': Yu Hsin's 'ai Chiang-Nan Fu'The Ai Chiang nan fu by the sixth century poet Yu Hsin is one of the most famous and difficult of all Chinese medieval poems. It relates in a highly allegorical and elliptical manner the fall of the Liang dynasty, which the poet served. The poem belongs to the genre of the fu; rhapsodical, elegiac works written in an irregular metre. It is, however not at all typical of the genre, which is more often associated with descriptions of hunting parks,