New Songs from the Jade Terrace (Chinese: 玉臺新詠; pinyin: Yùtái xīnyǒng) is an anthology of early medieval Chinese poetry in the romantic or semi-erotic "palace style" (gongti 宮體) that dates to the late Southern dynasties period (420–589).
[3] The American sinologist Burton Watson notes that this expression may also refer to "a mirror stand of jade such as women use in their toilet; and since the Chinese are fond of elegant euphemisms for parts of the body, it may even have some more esoteric connotation.
Although it was compiled in the early- to mid-530s, no manuscript or printing of the New Songs from before the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) has survived to modern times.
[7] It is divided into ten sections, and 769 headings of verses "devoted almost entirely to poems about love,"[8] that is, the primary emphasis is upon male-female love in the context of the women's apartments, and contains material ranging from anonymous Han Dynasty ballads through poems contemporary to the time of composition.
In other cases, a "hint of fetishism" is shown in poetic verses describing the objects associated with the men or women described in the poems; that is, their bedrooms and feast halls, the musical instruments, lamps or mirror-stands which they handle, or the fine stationary upon which they write their love notes.