Shangqing Zhao

School of Computer Science and Technology, East China Normal University, China 2 Shanghai Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Education, East China Normal University, China 3 Department of Chinese Language and Literature, East China Normal University, China Corresponding author. Abstract The generation of classical Chinese Ci poetry, a form demanding a sophisticated blend of structural rigidity, rhythmic harmony, and artistic quality, poses a significant challenge for large language models (LLMs). To systematically evaluate and advance this capability, we introduce Chinese Cipai Variants (CCiV), a benchmark designed to assess LLM-generated Ci poetry across these three dimensions: structure, rhythm, and quality. Our evaluation of 17 LLMs on 30 Cipai reveals two critical phenomena: models frequently generate valid but unexpected historical variants of a poetic form, and adherence to tonal patterns is substantially harder than structural rules. We further show that form-aware prompting can improve structural and tonal control for stronger models, while potentially degrading weaker ones. Finally, we observe weak and inconsistent alignment between formal correctness and literary quality in our sample. CCiV highlights the need for variant-aware evaluation and more holistic constrained creative generation methods. CCiV: A Benchmark for Structure, Rhythm and Quality in LLM-Generated Chinese Ci Poetry Shangqing Zhao1 Yupei Ren1,2 Yuhao Zhou1 Xiaopeng Bai2,3 Man Lan1,2