Writers › Writer / Poet
Song Lian
Early Ming scholar-official who tutored the heir Zhu Biao, directed the compilation of the History of Yuan, and died on his way into exile after the Hu Weiyong purge
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 Jinglian · Hao Qianxi
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Song Lian, courtesy name Jinglian, was known as Qianxi after his family's old home near Jinhua, though he himself settled at Pujiang. A pupil of Wu Lai, Liu Guan and Huang Jin, he declined a Hanlin post in the late Yuan to write in the Longmen hills. After Zhu Yuanzhang took Wuzhou he summoned Song, and in 1360 brought him with Liu Ji, Zhang Yi and Ye Chen to Yingtian, where he taught the classics to the heir Zhu Biao. In 1369 he was made chief compiler of the History of Yuan (Yuanshi), and in 1376 he became Hanlin academician recipient of edicts, retiring the next year. In 1380 his grandson Song Shen was implicated in the Hu Weiyong case; Empress Ma and the heir saved him from execution, and the family was banished to Maozhou instead. He died at Kuizhou the following year and was later canonised as Wenxian. The History of Ming notes that envoys from Korea, Annam and Japan paid gold for copies of his collected writings.
Life and times
Dates 1310 CE–1381 CE