Bai Pu

Also known as Zi Renfu · Hao Langu · Zi Taisu

Bai Pu, first named Heng, courtesy names Renfu and later Taisu, styled Langu, came from Yuzhou (modern Hequ, Shanxi) and was the son of Bai Hua, an assistant commissioner in the Jin Bureau of Military Affairs; the family later settled in Zhending. When the Mongols took the Jin capital at Kaifeng, the boy was separated from his father and was taken in and taught by his father's friend Yuan Haowen. In the early Yuan the minister Shi Tianze recommended him for office, but he declined and travelled south, living for many years at Jiankang. Of more than ten plays he wrote, three survive, including *Rain on the Paulownia Tree* (*Wutong yu*) about Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and Yang Guifei, and *Over the Wall* (*Qiangtou mashang*); his lyrics were collected as *Heavenly Pipes* (*Tianlai ji*). Zhou Deqing's preface to the *Rhymes of the Central Plain* (*Zhongyuan yinyun*) names Guan, Zheng, Bai and Ma together, the source of the later grouping of the four masters of Yuan drama.