Qu Yuan initiated a new era of poetry from "what to sing" to "why to create", and was the founder of China's "what to sing" poetry.

He initiated a new era of poetry from collective singing to individual independent writing. He is the founder of China's positive romantic poetry tradition, the first great patriotic poet in China, and one of the four cultural celebrities in the world (including Polish Copernicus, British Shakespeare and Italian Dante). He wrote Li Sao, China's first long poem, in the form of Chu Ci.