Writers › Writer / Poet
Wu Lai
Yuan scholar from Pujiang who failed the 1320 metropolitan examination, wrote in retirement in the hills and taught the young Song Lian
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 Lifu
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Wu Lai, courtesy name Lifu, first named Laifeng, came from Pujiang in Wuzhou and was the son of the Jixian academician Wu Zhifang. He could compose at seven, and the Yuan History tells how he borrowed his uncle's copy of the History of the Former Han a volume a day and could recite each one word for word when tested. In 1320 he went up to the metropolitan examination on the Spring and Autumn Annals but failed, and he withdrew to the Shenniao hills to read and write, producing a string of studies on the classics and on history. He liked to say that writing was like warfare, with both regular and surprise moves; Liu Guan called him a talent of the age, and Huang Jin said his prose read like that of the Qin and Han. Recommended by a censor for the headship of the Changxiang Academy, he died before taking it up, aged forty-three; his pupils, among them Song Lian, gave him the private posthumous name Yuanying.
Life and times
Dates 1297 CE–1340 CE