During the period of the Wei (220-265) and Jin (265-420) and Northern and Southern Dynasties Period (386-581), Piantiwen (rhyming prose characterized by parallel style and ornate language) prevailed and prose declined.

Some experts claimed that Piantiwen was more concerned with style than with logical argument. Piantiwen has many special features: (i) the whole article is composed of antithetic sentences; (ii) the antithetic sentences are made up of four-character and six-character lines; (iii) in terms of rhythm and tone of words, Piantiwen can be divided into two categories: rhythmic and non-rhythmic; (iv) the articles attach much importance to ornate wording and literary quotation.

Following the Han Dynasty, worship of form was taken to an extreme at the expense of substance, giving rise to the belletristic Piantiwen of the Southern Dynasties Period (420-589), in which balance of rhythm, imagery and tonal patterns reigned supreme. This worship of formal elements created a backlash in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), in which neoclassicists such as Han Yu (768-824) and Liu Zongyuan (773-819) called for a return to substance and the rhetorical styles of the Qin (221-206BC) and the Han (206BC-220AD) dynasties.

From the Tang Dynasty onwards, different schools of writing have offered different takes on the classical language, and literary aesthetics have oscillated between form and substance, and between arch conservatism and the adoption of new grammar and lexicon.

Piantiwen is a unique literature style in China, and it developed from a rhetorical technique of ancient literature. As a new style, it did not have a fixed appellation. The names of Pianwen and Pianliwen did not appear until the Tang Dynasty.