Writers › Writer / Poet
Xin Qiji
Southern Song ci poet and commander who raised troops under Jin rule as a young man, came south, and left more than six hundred lyrics
Mural of Green Jade Cup (Lantern Festival), a work by this person.
During Lantern Festival, jeweled carriages and dragon lanterns fill the bright streets as a seeker turns toward a woman standing where the light grows dim. The crowded celebration gives way to a single encounter.
Also known as Zi Youan · Hao Jiaxuan · Jiaxuan Jushi · Zhong Min
Xin Qiji, courtesy name You'an, sobriquet Jiaxuan, came from Licheng near Jinan and was born in the north under Jin rule. In 1161 he gathered two thousand men to join Geng Jing's rising as his secretary, and the next year, on a mission south, learned that the turncoat Zhang Anguo had murdered Geng; he rode with fifty horsemen into the Jin camp, seized Zhang and brought him back for execution. In the south he submitted the Ten Memorials on Humble Policy and the Nine Proposals on recovering the north, and as pacification commissioner of Hunan he created the Flying Tiger Army before taking the same post in Jiangxi. Repeatedly impeached, he spent long years in retirement at Daihu in Shangrao and at Piaoquan in Yanshan, with brief recalls to Shaoxing and Zhenjiang. He died at Yanshan in 1207 and was later given the posthumous name Zhongmin. His six hundred-odd surviving ci lyrics, more than any other Song poet's, are collected as Long and Short Lines of Jiaxuan (Jiaxuan changduanju).
Life and times
Dates 1140 CE–1207 CE