Ouyang Zhan (; 758–801;Hong, p. 34.

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 ...

Xingzhou 行周) was a Chinese poet and politician of the late

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 ...

. The account of his death from grief for a deceased lover gained great popularity in ninth-century China.

Life

Ouyang was born in Panhu village (), Chidian (), Jinjiang,

Fujian Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capi ...

. His family had resided for several generations in the southeast and included magistrates and assistants in

Quanzhou Quanzhou, postal map romanization, alternatively known as Chinchew, is a prefecture-level city, prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, China. It is Fujian's largest metrop ...

who came to service without examination.Moore, p. 111. Ouyang Zhan completed the jinshi degree in 792, alongside

Han Yu Han Yu (; 76825 December 824), courtesy name Tuizhi (), and commonly known by his posthumous name Han Wengong (韓文公), was a Chinese essayist, poet, philosopher, and politician during the Tang dynasty who significantly influenced the devel ...

and many other notable scholars in the year that came to known as the “list of tigers and dragons” (). Han Yu claimed that Ouyang Zhan was the first scholar of national standing to emerge from the southeast, a claim repeated by Wang Dingbao, but there were at least three degreeholders in the early eighth century from the Southeast.Moore, 116-117. Ouyang became assistant lecturer at the College of the Four Gates at the Imperial Academy in 799 and held it until his death. Ouyang became an ardent participant in Han Yu's

Classical Prose Movement The Classical Prose Movement () of the late Tang dynasty and the Song dynasty in China advocated clarity and precision rather than the florid ''pianwen'' () or parallel prose style that had been popular since the Han dynasty. Parallel prose had a ...

. His writings have been compiled in ten volumes (). His poetry appears in a section of the compilation ''

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 ...

''.

Death

Ouyang fell in love with a courtesan from

Taiyuan Taiyuan (; ; ; Mandarin pronunciation: ; also known as (), ()) is the capital and largest city of Shanxi Province, People's Republic of China. Taiyuan is the political, economic, cultural and international exchange center of Shanxi Province. ...

. When his official duties forced him to leave her, he promised to return. However, she was unable to muster the patience required and died of loneliness. When Ouyang heard the news, he too died of grief. This story was recounted in Meng Jian's (孟簡; jinshi 791) "Recounting Ouyang Xingzhou’s Affairs" (), a work about Ouyang's relationship with the courtesan that led to both of their deaths. In addition, Han Yu's elegy for Ouyang () became a famous historical homage.

Legacy

Ouyang Zhan had three sons and is the first ancestor of all the majority of Ouyang surnames in Jinjiang.

References

* ''

New Book of Tang The ''New Book of Tang'', generally translated as the "New History of the Tang" or "New Tang History", is a work of official history covering the Tang dynasty in ten volumes and 225 chapters. The work was compiled by a team of scholars of the So ...

'' 203.5786-7. * Hong, Yue. "Romantic Identity in the Funerary Inscriptions (muzhi) of Tang China." ''Asia Major'' (third series) 25.1 (2012): 33-62. * Moore, Oliver J. ''Rituals of Recruitment in Tang China: Reading an Annual Programme in the Collected Statements By Wang Dingbao (870-940)''. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

Notes

{{reflist

External links

Book 349
of the ''

'' (which collects Ouyang Zhan's poems) in 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 ...

758 births 801 deaths 8th-century Chinese poets 9th-century Chinese poets People from Jinjiang, Fujian Poets from Fujian Politicians from Quanzhou Tang dynasty poets Tang dynasty politicians from Fujian