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Song Qi
Northern Song scholar-official who wrote the biographies of the New Tang History and whose line on red apricot blossoms earned him the nickname Red Apricot Minister
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Zi Zijing · An Lu · Jing Wen · Zhengguo Gong
Song Qi, courtesy name Zijing, came from an Anlu family that had moved to Yongqiu near Kaifeng, and in 1024 he sat the examinations with his elder brother Song Xiang. The Ministry of Rites ranked Song Qi first and his brother third, but Empress Dowager Zhangxian held that a younger brother should not precede an elder, so Song Xiang was made top graduate and Song Qi dropped to tenth; the pair became known as the Two Songs. Working beside Ouyang Xiu on the New Tang History (Xin Tang shu), he wrote its biographies over more than ten years. He rose to minister of works and chief Hanlin academician, died in 1061, and was named Jingwen. His lyric line about spring bustling on a branch of red apricot blossom earned him, Song anecdotes say, the nickname Red Apricot Minister, and Wang Guowei's Remarks on Lyrics in the Human World (Renjian cihua) said the single word for bustling brings the whole scene to life.
Life and times
Dates 998 CE–1061 CE