Writers › Writer / Poet
Lu You
Southern Song poet from Shanyin who pressed for recovering the north, served at the Nanzheng front and left more than nine thousand poems
Mural of Phoenix Hairpin (Pink Delicate Hands), a work by this person.
In Shen Garden, two former lovers meet beside spring willows and a garden wall, a red handkerchief between them. Their restrained reunion leaves the words of the old wound unspoken.
Also known as Zi Wuguan · Hao Fangweng · Lu Fangweng
Lu You, courtesy name Wuguan, styled Fangweng, came from Shanyin in Yuezhou (modern Shaoxing) and first entered service through his family's hereditary privilege. In 1153 he placed first in the qualifying examination for serving officials, ahead of Qin Gui's grandson Qin Xun, and was failed in the ministry examination the following year. Emperor Xiaozong granted him jinshi status, and in 1172 he joined the staff of Wang Yan, pacification commissioner of Sichuan, visiting the front at Nanzheng; later, as an adviser to Fan Chengda in Chengdu, he was mocked as dissolute and took the name Fangweng, the Unrestrained Old Man. In later life he lived mostly at Shanyin, was briefly recalled to work on the dynastic history, rose to academician of the Baozhang Pavilion, and died in 1210 aged eighty-five, writing the poem 'To My Sons' on his deathbed. He spoke of ten thousand poems in sixty years; over nine thousand survive in the *Jiannan Poetry Drafts* (*Jiannan shigao*), alongside his *Weinan Collection* (*Weinan wenji*) of prose.
Life and times
Dates 1125 CE–1210 CE