This is a graceful piece with many allusions. It describes a widow playing a pipa beside the river and complains in tears that she was in love with a certain man, but her parents married her off to someone else. Now that her husband has died, she is looking for the man she used to love.

One of the allusions originates in the Yuan za-ju opera, Scholar Tao Portraying Great Scenery in Drunkenness, which tells of Tao Gu, a scholar of the Later Zhou of the Five Dynasties, who serves as an envoy to the Southern Tang. The tune, “Sleeping overnight in a Pavilion”, describes his embarrassment when he finds himself entangled in a sexual trap. Another allusion is seen in the Ming chuan-qi opera, The Story at Blue Bridge; it tells the story of Fei Hang, a man living in the Tang Dynasty, who meets a fairy and eventually marries her and becomes a fairy himself.

Moreover, some phrases in Red Cliff Rhapsody by Su Shi are used, such as “zhu-lu” (“Boats connect with boats, banners and flags shelter the sky”), “a widow on a lone boat” (“A hidden dragon dances in the deep vales, a widow cries on a lone boat”). Also, Li Qing-zhao’s “ze-meng” (“I fear that the small boat on the twin rivers cannot bear my sorrow”) in “Spring in Wu –ling” as well as Bai Ju-yi’s “lie-po” (“At the end of a piece, her fingertips run through the strings and the strings makes a sound like the tearing of fabric”) in “Song of the Pipa Player” are both used.

With these special allusions and other phrases in the tune, the whole piece is noteworthy for its elegant and graceful phrasings.