Writers › Writer / Poet
Jiang Jie
Late Song lyricist from Yixing who passed the jinshi in 1274, refused to serve the Yuan, and is remembered for his lyrics on cherries and plantains and on listening to rain
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 Shengyu · Hao Zhushan · Zhushan Xiansheng
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Jiang Jie, courtesy name Shengyu, sobriquet Zhushan, came from Yangxian, present-day Yixing in Jiangsu, and passed the jinshi examination in 1274. Two years later Yuan armies took Lin'an before he had taken up any post, and he withdrew to Zhushan by Lake Tai, declining every Yuan recommendation; scholars called him Master Zhushan. A line in his *Yijian mei* written while crossing Wujiang, about time slipping by as the cherries redden and the plantains turn green, earned him the nickname 'Cherry Jinshi'. His *Yu meiren* on listening to rain traces a whole life through three nights of rain, in youth, in middle age and in old age after the fall of the dynasty. Some ninety of his lyrics survive as *Zhushan ci*, which the Qing imperial catalogue praised for exact diction and harmonious tones.
Life and times
Dates c. 1245 CE–c. 1305 CE