Ouyang Xiu

Also known as Zi Yongshu · Hao Zuiweng · Liuyi Jushi · Chuguo Gong · Wen Zhong

Ouyang Xiu, courtesy name Yongshu, styled Zuiweng and later Liuyi Jushi, came from Luling in Jizhou (modern Ji'an, Jiangxi); his father died when he was four and his mother taught him to write with reeds in the sand. He passed the jinshi examination in 1030, and in 1036 was demoted to magistrate of Yiling for a letter attacking the remonstrator Gao Ruone, who had failed to defend Fan Zhongyan. After the Qingli reforms collapsed he was sent to govern Chuzhou in 1045, where he wrote the Pavilion of the Old Drunkard. As chief examiner in 1057 he passed Su Shi, Su Zhe and Zeng Gong and rejected the contorted Imperial Academy style. He co-edited the New Tang History with Song Qi and wrote the New History of the Five Dynasties on his own. He became Vice Grand Councillor in 1061, retired in 1071 and died at Yingzhou the next year, receiving the posthumous name Wenzhong. Su Shi's preface to his collected works compared his teaching to that of Han Yu.