Writers › Writer / Poet
He Jingming
Ming poet from Xinyang, paired with Li Mengyang as leaders of the archaist movement, who broke with Li by arguing for creation over imitation
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 Zhongmo · Hao Baipo · Dafu Shanren
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
He Jingming, courtesy name Zhongmo, styled Baipo and Dafu Shanren, came from Xinyang in Henan; he wrote poems at eight, passed the provincial examination at fourteen in 1498, and became a jinshi in 1502, serving as a drafter in the Secretariat. When the eunuch Liu Jin took power early in the Zhengde reign, He went home on sick leave and was struck off with the other absent officials. Reinstated on Li Dongyang's recommendation after Liu's fall, he wrote to Yang Yiqing to save the imprisoned Li Mengyang, and after the Qianqing Palace fire he memorialised against the emperor's adopted sons, frontier troops, Tibetan monks and eunuchs. He became education intendant of Shaanxi; he went home ill soon after the Jiajing emperor's accession and died at thirty-eight. He and Li Mengyang, once close, fell out when Li defended imitation of the ancients and He creative change, and the Ming History says everyone spoke of the two of them together.
Life and times
Dates 1483 CE–1521 CE