The poetic reputation of Chen Zi'ang (658?-699?), an innovator in Tang poetry, rests mainly on his cycle of thirty-eight Ganyu poems. One of the earliest admirers of these poems was Du Fu (712-770), who praised them for setting an example of "loyalty and righteousness" for all posterity. Many of these poems, often under the guise of cosmic and mystical themes, contain veiled criticisms of Emperor Gaozong's indulgence in Empress Wu and condemnations of the empress's usurpation of the Tang empire. However, because the poems are so obscure in style and so rich in unusual diction, the exact meaning often becomes difficult to fathom. Some later historians and critics were apparently content to study the diction of the poems without bothering about meaning, while others were quick to condemn the themes as orderless and aimless, and the meaning simply as obscure and nonsensical. Justice was done to Chen Zi'ang when Chen Hang of the Qing dynasty once more acknowledged the qualities of "loyalty and righteousness" in the Ganyu poems and attempted to search through their unusual diction for deeper layers of meaning in his Shi bixing jian (Commentary on Allegorical Poems). Many of his interpretations, however, were far-fetched and even mistaken. This article, apart from reviewing Chen Hang's interpretations, aims at making a detailed study of the Ganyu cycle and putting the poems in the context in which Du Fu and other Tang literary masters once saw them.