Liu Changqing (; 709–785),

courtesy name A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.Ulrich Theobald ...

Wenfang () was a Chinese poet and politician during the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...

. Eleven of his poems were collected in the popular anthology ''

Three Hundred Tang Poems The ''Three Hundred Tang Poems'' () is an anthology of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907). It was first compiled around 1763 by Sun Zhu (1722–1778Yu, 64–65), who was a Qing Dynasty scholar and was also known as Hengtang Tuishi ( ...

''.

Biography

Liu Changqing was born around either 710 or 725. He came from the city of

Xuancheng Xuancheng () is a city in the southeast of Anhui province. Archeological digs suggest that the city has been settled for over 4,000 years, and has been under formal administration since the Qin dynasty. Located in the lower Yangtze River drainage ...

. His ancestral hometown was

Hejian Hejian (; alternative romanizations: Ho Dsie Ho-kien fou is a county-level city under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Cangzhou, in the east-central part of Hebei province, China. , the population was ca. 895,000 inhabitants a ...

. Most of his youth was spent in the city of

Luoyang Luoyang is a city located in the confluence area of Luo River (Henan), Luo River and Yellow River in the west of Henan province. Governed as a prefecture-level city, it borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the ...

. Liu obtained his

Jinshi ''Jinshi'' () was the highest and final degree in the imperial examination in Imperial China. The examination was usually taken in the imperial capital in the palace, and was also called the Metropolitan Exam. Recipients are sometimes referre ...

title around 750s. In 780, he became the governor of

Suizhou Suizhou (), formerly Sui County (), is a prefecture-level city in northern Hubei province, People's Republic of China, bordering Henan province to the north and east. Etymology The Sui in Suizhou is derived from the ancient 'Suishizu' () . Ad ...

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...

province. Because of his term in Suizhou, Liu was often called Liu Suizhou by his contemporaries. He died around 786.

Poetry

Liu's poems did not receive much praise during his lifetime although he was one of the representative poets during the reign of

Emperor Dezong of Tang Emperor Dezong of Tang (27 May 742According to Li Kuo's biography in the ''Old Book of Tang'', he was born on the ''guisi'' day in the 4th month of the 1st year of the Tianbao era of Tang Xuanzong's reign. This date corresponds to 27 May 742 in ...

. However, he was gradually acknowledged by later generations. Liu was especially skillful on the writing of poems with 5 characters.《唐诗大辞典》 An example of his poetry can be seen below:

Notes

References

Works cited

* * * * *Watson, Burton (1971). ''CHINESE LYRICISM: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century''. New York: Columbia University Press. *

External links

* *Books of the ''

Quan Tangshi (''Complete Tang Poems'') is the largest collection of Tang poetry, containing some 49,000 lyric poems by more than twenty-two hundred poets. In 1705, it was commissioned at the direction of the Qing dynasty Kangxi Emperor and published under ...

'' that include collected poems of Liu Changqing at the

Chinese Text Project The Chinese Text Project (CTP; ) is a digital library project that assembles collections of early Chinese texts. The name of the project in Chinese literally means "The Chinese Philosophical Book Digitization Project", showing its focus on books ...