But according to Yu Fu, widely considered to be written by Qu himself or a person very familiar with him, suicide was an ultimate way to protect his innocence and life principles.

Qu Yuan is also regarded as one of the most prominent figures of Romanticism in Chinese classical literature, and his masterpieces influenced some of the great Romanticist poets in the Tang dynasty.

During the Han dynasty, Qu Yuan became established as a heroic example of model behaviour for a scholar-official denied public recognition suitable to their worth.

[14] The Chu Ci was compiled and annotated by Wang Yi (died AD 158), and is the source of transmission of these poems and any reliable information about them to subsequent times; thus, the role which Qu Yuan had in the authoring, editing, or retouching of these works remains unclear.

[16] The Chu Ci, as a preservation of early literature, has provided invaluable data for linguistic research into the history of the Chinese language, from Chen Di on.

[18] Their view of Qu's social idealism and unbending patriotism became canonical under the People's Republic of China after the 1949 Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War.

[18][13] For example, one high-school Chinese textbook from 1957 began with the sentence "Qu Yuan was the first great patriotic poet in the history of our country's literature".

[21] This cult status increased Qu Yuan's position within China's literary canon, seeing him placed on postage stamps[22] and the Dragon Boat Festival elevated to a national public holiday in 2008.

It has, however, come at the expense of more the critical scholarly appraisals of Qu Yuan's historicity and alleged body of work that had developed during the late Qing and early Republic.

[18] Popular legend has it that villagers carried their dumplings and boats to the middle of the river and desperately tried to save Qu Yuan after he immersed himself in the Miluo but were too late to do so.

Today, people still eat zongzi and participate in dragon boat races to commemorate Qu Yuan's sacrifice on the fifth day of the fifth month of the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar.

The countries around China, such as Vietnam and Korea, also celebrate variations of this Dragon Boat Festival as part of their shared cultural heritage.