Writers › Writer / Poet
Chen Lu
Yuan prose writer from Putian whom Ma Zuchang and Yu Ji brought to the capital, where he taught at the Directorate of Education and rose to its assistant director
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 Zhongzhong
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Chen Lu, courtesy name Zhongzhong, came from Putian in Xinghua, in present-day Fujian; orphaned young, he was raised and taught by his maternal grandfather and later studied with the local scholar Fu Guzhi at Quanzhou. He held a teaching post in Fujian until the censor Ma Zuchang, passing through on a mission, told him he belonged in the court academies and urged him to go to the capital. There Yu Ji read his writing with admiration, and on Zhao Shiyan's recommendation he became an instructor at the Directorate of Education, where his students petitioned to keep him for a second term. He was made deputy superintendent of schools in Jiang-Zhe in 1334, returned to the Hanlin Academy in 1338, and became assistant director of the Directorate in 1341, dying two years later at fifty-five. He regarded Yu Ji as his truest friend and once travelled a thousand li in summer heat to visit him at Linchuan; his collected works are the Anya tang ji.
Life and times
Dates 1288 CE–1343 CE