Qu Yuan was an important writer of poems who lived around 300. He lived at a time when the government of China was very weak and all its different parts began to say they were different countries. Qu Yuan's part was called Chu, and its king Xiong Huai was so powerful that he controlled Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, and most of the places around them. King Huai listened to other leaders who said bad things about Qu Yuan and made him move to the countryside twice. King Huai also made other mistakes that also hurt Chu. The second time that Qu Yuan was sent away, he wrote a long poem about his sadness and then killed himself by walking into the Miluo River with a heavy stone. People don't agree about exactly why he did this but most think it was because of sadness for his country or a last try to make his king pay attention to his many mistakes.