Writers › Writer / Poet
Wang Jiusi
Ming writer from Hu county, one of the Former Seven Masters, who was dismissed as a supposed partisan of the eunuch Liu Jin and spent forty years at home writing songs and plays
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 Jingfu · Hao Meibei
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Wang Jiusi, courtesy name Jingfu, styled Meipi, came from Hu county near Xi'an and became a jinshi in 1496, serving as a Hanlin corrector and then in the Ministry of Personnel, where he rose to director. With Li Mengyang, Kang Hai and others he called for a return to ancient models in writing and is counted among the Former Seven Masters. When the eunuch Liu Jin fell in 1510, Wang was treated as one of his partisans, demoted to assistant prefect of Shouzhou and soon impeached again and forced to retire. He spent the rest of his long life at home, drinking and writing songs with his neighbour Kang Hai, likening themselves to actors; he even paid a musician handsomely to teach him the pipa. He wrote the play Du Fu Enjoys the Spring, a one-act version of the Wolf of Zhongshan, the song collection Bishan yuefu and the Meipi ji, and he died in 1551.
Life and times
Dates 1468 CE–1551 CE