Writers › Writer / Poet
Wang Anguo
Northern Song writer, younger brother of Wang Anshi, who criticised his brother's New Policies and Lu Huiqing and was dismissed in the Zheng Xia affair
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 Pingfu
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Wang Anguo, courtesy name Pingfu, came from Linchuan in Fuzhou, Jiangxi, and was a younger brother of Wang Anshi. Early in the Xining reign Han Jiang recommended him, and after a special test he was granted jinshi status, later serving as a collator in the imperial libraries. He disliked his brother's New Policies, and when Emperor Shenzong asked in 1071 what people said of them, he replied that the men chosen were poor and revenue was squeezed too hard. He also urged his brother to keep away from Lu Huiqing and earned Lu's hostility. When Zheng Xia presented his picture of refugees to the throne in 1074, Lu used the affair to accuse him of collusion, and Wang Anguo was dismissed and sent home, dying soon after. His collected works, the Wang Jiaoli ji, are long lost, but his song lyric beginning with the line about failing to keep spring still appears in anthologies of Song ci.
Life and times
Dates 1028 CE–1074 CE