This article attempts to define the term guping in the Recent Style verse. Guping, literally the "solitary level tone", refers not to any solitary level tone in a line, but specifically to the solitary level tone in each of the following two tonal arrangements: "level-level oblique-oblique-level" and "oblique-oblique-level-level oblique-oblique-level". In each of these two lines, the second level tone becomes a guping if the first level tone is changed to oblique. In each of the two lines just mentioned, the replacement of the level tone in question by the oblique tone considerably reduces the tonal strength of the line and has been consciously avoided by poets since the mid-Tang. But it was not until about one thousand years later that a name, albeit a misleading one, was given to the solitary level tone in such an undesirable tonal arrangement. Without a clear understanding of the term guping, one might be led to think that any solitary level tone in any tonal arrangement in the Recent Style verse is a guping, It is this misconception, still being held in some academic circles, that this article seeks to remove.