Zu Yong (699–746?) was a

Chinese poet The following is a list of Poets who wrote or write much of their poetry in the languages of China. __NOTOC__ A *Ai Qing B *Bai Juyi or Bo Juyi *Consort Ban *Ban Gu (32–92 A.D.)Minford, John, and Joseph S. M. Lau, ''Classical Chinese Lite ...

of the High Tang period. His

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 ...

is unknown. He attained a ''

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 ...

'' degree in the

imperial examination The imperial examination (; lit. "subject recommendation") refers to a civil-service examination system in Imperial China, administered for the purpose of selecting candidates for the state bureaucracy. The concept of choosing bureaucrats by ...

in 724, but left the capital to live a pastoral life, and composed his most famous poems on nature. Among his better-known poems are the ''

jueju ''Jueju'' (), or Chinese quatrain, is a type of '' jintishi'' ("modern form poetry") that grew popular among Chinese poets in the Tang Dynasty (618–907), although traceable to earlier origins. ''Jueju'' poems are always quatrains; or, more s ...

'' "On Seeing the Snow Peak of Zhongnan" and the ' "Rufen bie ye". Book 131 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 ...

'' is devoted to his poetry.

Biography

Zu Yong was probably born around 699, but this is not certain. He hailed from

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 ...

in modern-day

Henan Province 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 ...

. He was a childhood friend of the poet Wang Wei. In 724 he attained a ''

'' degree in the

. He earned the favour of the high-ranking statesman Zhang Yue, but he did not take to life at court, and in his later years retired to his villa in Rufen (, modern-day

Fuyang () is a prefecture-level city in northwestern Anhui province, China. It borders Bozhou to the northeast, Huainan to the southeast, Lu'an to the south, and the province of Henan on all other sides. Its population was 8,200,264 inhabitants at the ...

Anhui Province Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...

). His

is not known.

Poetry

Zu Yong occupies a prominent position as a nature poet of the High Tang period. In addition to writing about natural scenery, his poems sing the praises of life in seclusion. Thirty-six of his poems survive, and two of his poems were included in the ''

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 ( ...

''. He was a close friend of the poet Wang Wei and also an associate of Wang Han. One of his most famous poems is the ' "Rufen bie ye" (), which is considered the representative poem of his post-retirement period. The first half of the poem bemoans the solitude and loneliness of the poet's life of farming after leaving court, and then the latter half is filled with love for the new environment in which the poet finds himself. Another of his best-regarded works is the ''

'' "On Seeing the Snow Peak of Zhongnan" (). There exists a Ming-era compilation called the ''Zu Yong Ji'' ().

Notes

References

Cited works

* * * {{cite book , editor-last = Matsuura , editor-first = Tomohisa , editor-link = Tomohisa Matsuura , last1 = Ueki , first1 = Hisayuki , author-link1 = Hisayuki Ueki , last2 = Uno , first2 = Naoto , author-link2 = Naoto Uno , last3 = Matsubara , first3 = Akira , author-link3 = Akira Matsubara , chapter = Shijin to Shi no Shōgai (So Ei) , pages = 81–82 , title =

Kanshi no Jiten Kanshi may refer to: * Kanshi (poetry) (漢詩), Chinese poetry written by Japanese * Kanshi, Fujian (坎市镇), town in Yongding District, Longyan, Fujian, China * Kanshi, India, town in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India * Kanshi, Mbuji-Mayi, a commu ...

, script-title = ja:漢詩の事典 , language = ja , year = 1999 , volume = 1 , location = Tokyo , publisher = Taishūkan Shoten , oclc = 41025662

External links

Book 131
of the ''

'' (which collects Zu Yong'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 ...

699 births 746 deaths 8th-century Chinese poets Poets from Henan Three Hundred Tang Poems poets Writers from Luoyang