During 1080-86 Su was in exile as a minor official at Huangzhou (main city Huanggang), on the south side of the Yangzi River in what is today Hunan province. While there he made a trip with some friends to a scenic river spot called Red Cliff. This was the place, according to Su's account, where over 800 years earlier the famous Battle of Red Cliff had taken place. In the rhapsodies Su contrasts the fighting that took place there then with the peacefulness of the present scene.

This setting for qin, a largely syllabic arrangement of both the preface and the fu itself (here the former fu, in the next melody the latter one), does not appear in the 1511 edition of Taigu Yiyin, but only its continuation, dated 1515. It then survives in ten further handbooks to 1802, all with the same lyrics but different music.