As crown prince, Xiao Gang was a distinguished poet, as well as patron of the poets Liu Zun and Xu Li (), as well as Xu Ling, the anthologist of "New Songs from the Jade Terrace". The poem "Multitudinous Blossoms" by Liu Zun describes the luxurious but ultimately pitiful life of a professional male prostitute. One of the crown prince's own poems describes a languid life of lolling on an ivory inlaid bed, surrounded by feather curtains, with a male lover. Given his own writing, some have asserted that Xiao Gang was homosexual. Others have pointed to the numerous children claimed by him later in life as evidence of heterosexuality. There is no way to prove either assertion, and the notion of a powerful man pointedly limiting himself to one gender or the other would in fact have been alien in a culture where class hierarchy affected male sex lives far more than the genders of their partners. The poet Xu's writing style became known as "palace style", and initially, Emperor Wu was displeased about this development, but once Emperor Wu met Xu, he was impressed by Xu's talents, and became a patron of Xu himself as well.