Writers › Writer / Poet
Zhang Yanghao
Yuan official and sanqu poet from Jinan who rose to minister of rites and died while directing famine relief in Shaanxi in 1329
Mural of Meditations at Tongguan Pass, a work by this person.
At Tongguan, massed peaks press over the Yellow River as the road passes remnants of palaces on the way to Chang’an. The grand landscape turns toward the people who bear the cost of dynastic change.
Also known as Zi Ximeng · Hao Yunzhuang
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Zhang Yanghao, courtesy name Ximeng, styled Yunzhuang, came from Jinan and rose from instructor at Dongping to county magistrate and investigating censor. Under Emperor Wuzong his memorial of over ten thousand characters on ten faults of government angered those in power; dismissed, he changed his name and fled. Under Renzong he supervised the examinations as vice minister of rites, and when Yingzong planned a lantern display in the palace he wrote against it, and the emperor remarked that only Zhang would dare. He rose to minister of rites, then resigned to care for his aged father at his Yunzhuang retreat and refused repeated summonses. In the Guanzhong drought of 1329 he accepted the post of vice censor-in-chief for Shaanxi, gave away his property to the starving and died four months later, aged sixty, named Wenzhong. His song on Tongguan ends with the line that the common people suffer whether a dynasty rises or falls.
Life and times
Dates 1270 CE–1329 CE