[2] The work was so highly renowned and frequently copied upon its release that the price of paper in Luoyang is said to have risen as a result.
[3] This later gave rise to the popular Chinese idiom 洛阳纸贵 ("Paper is Expensive in Luoyang"), today used to praise a literary work.
[4] Zuo described his rhapsodies on the three capitals as derivative of similar works by Zhang Heng and Ban Gu.
However, Mark Edward Lewis has written that Zuo's rhapsodies marked the end of the Han dynasty ideal of the ritually perfect capital, because they describe three simultaneously existing, contemporary capitals, suppressing the ritual and historical evolution that structured the previous works.
Gaul and Hiltz attribute this change in perspective to the replacement of Shamanistic beliefs with Confucian ethics and Daoist religion.