Writers › Writer / Poet
Shi Junbao
Early Yuan playwright from Pingyang credited with ten zaju plays, three of which survive, including the story of Qiu Hu who failed to recognise his own wife
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 Shizhan Junbao
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Shi Junbao was a zaju playwright of the early Yuan whom Zhong Sicheng's *Register of Ghosts* (*Lugui bu*) lists among the older generation already dead, giving his home as Pingyang and crediting him with ten plays. Three survive: *Qiu Hu Flirts with His Wife*, *Qujiang Pond* and *Ziyun Court*, each built around a woman. In the first, Qiu Hu returns after ten years at war and, failing to recognise his wife Luo Meiying in a mulberry grove, tries to seduce her; when she learns who he is, she demands a divorce. *Qujiang Pond* reworks the Tang tale of Li Wa, in which the courtesan Li Yaxian rescues the ruined Zheng Yuanhe and spurs him to pass the examinations. His identity is disputed: one view equates him with the Jurchen Shizhan Deyu, whose epitaph was written by Wang Yun, while another takes him for a different Pingyang writer.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; zaju playwright of the early Yuan