Writers › Writer / Poet
Zhou Bangyan
Northern Song lyricist and music official who won notice with a rhapsody on the capital and later headed the Dasheng music bureau, setting ci to tunes of his own
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 Meicheng · Hao Qing Zhen Ju Shi · Qing Zhen
Zhou Bangyan, courtesy name Meicheng, styled Qingzhen Jushi, came from Qiantang (Hangzhou). The History of Song (Songshi) describes him as a careless youth who nonetheless read widely. Early in the Yuanfeng reign he presented a rhapsody of more than ten thousand characters on the capital Bian; Emperor Shenzong had it read aloud in the Erying Hall and raised him at one stroke from student to instructor at the Imperial University. He later taught in Luzhou, governed Lishui county and rose to vice-director of the Court of the Imperial Clan. Under Emperor Huizong he became director of the Palace Library and head of the Dasheng bureau that set court music, then governed Shunchang and Chuzhou, and died in 1121 at sixty-six. Skilled in music, he composed melodies for his own lyrics, collected as Qingzhen ji, also called Pianyu ji. Wang Guowei called him the Du Fu of the ci lyric.
Life and times
Dates 1056 CE–1121 CE