Writers › Writer / Poet
Yang Wanli
Southern Song poet and official from Jishui whose lively, colloquial manner came to be called the Chengzhai style, one of the four poets of the Restoration era
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 Tingxiu · Hao Chengzhai · Chengzhai Xiansheng · Wen Jie
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Yang Wanli, courtesy name Tingxiu, came from Jishui in Jizhou and passed the metropolitan examination in 1154. While assistant magistrate of Lingling he called on Zhang Jun, then in exile at Yongzhou, who urged him to make rectifying the mind and making the will sincere the core of his learning; Yang named his study Chengzhai, Sincerity Studio. He served as an erudite of the Directorate of Education, governor of Zhangzhou and Changzhou, judicial intendant of Guangdong, director of the Palace Library and fiscal vice-commissioner of Jiangdong. When the court planned to circulate iron coins in Jiangnan he refused to comply, was shifted to Ganzhou, declined and retired. Asked by the chief minister Han Tuozhou to write a record of his Southern Garden in return for high office, he answered that office could be given up but the record would not be written, and he stayed home for fifteen years. He died in 1206 and was named Wenjie. Yan Yu's Canglang Remarks on Poetry (Canglang shihua) lists a Yang Chengzhai style.
Life and times
Dates 1127 CE–1206 CE