Fu, bi, xing are an inseparable unity of modes which figure centrally in the Chinese poetical tradition. Viewed trichotomously, they are the constants in Chinese lyricism, underlying an imagistic insight into both presentation and representation, a sense, rational and practical, of categorical correspondence, and the spontaneous response to subtleties in natural phenomena. Zhong Rong 鍾嶸 (466-518) advocated the synthesis of the three modes by warning that the exclusive use of the latter two, bi and xing, would result in a kind of reconditeness beyond comprehension and damage the fluency of verbal expression; whereas the unaided employment of the first could only lead to too overt a delivery of one’s poetic ideas in a loose and diffused style. Liu Xie 劉勰 (465-520) held that xing is comparatively obscure as against bi which is obvious. Bi involves parallels between different objects, that is, the use of simile or metaphor; xing consists in affective responses to stimuli. Reason is to be supported by juxtaposing things with comparable features; emotion is to be revealed bγinsinuating perceptions with finesse. Xing, as a mode of expression, springs out from the poet's emotional urge, while bi is intended for poetic reasoning. According to Liu Xizai 劉熙載 (1813-1881), to express one's feelings through giving account of a situation of things is call fu; to single out something to parallel one’s sentiments is called bi. to feel something so deeply as to further arouse intense [poetic] emotions in one is called xing. In Pang Kai’s 龐塏 (?-17007) opinion, fu plays the leading role, xing and bi are geared to the function of fu. In the process of evolution, fu as a mode also developed into a genre called rhyme-prose due to its selfcontainment and autonomy. For this triad, the diversity in definition as well as the perplexity critics have experienced in their efforts to find its equivalent in Western texts, can be attributed to the interdependence and interpenetration of the three modes and especially the indivisibility of bi and xing. For comparative studies, we recommend Paul Ricoeur’s proposition of “the metaphorical process as cognition, imagination, and feeling.” To regard this triad as the dialectical unfolding of poetic process, and relate it to other triads in Chinese poetics in a schematic configuration, will enable us to see more clearly how these modes are predicated on a distinctive tradition which is characterized by what F.S.C. Northrop terms “the immediately experienced aesthetic continuum.”