Writers › Writer / Poet
Gui Youguang
Ming essayist from Kunshan who taught for two decades before passing the metropolitan examination at sixty, known for plain prose about family life such as 'Xiangji Studio'
Mural of Record of the Xiangji Studio, a work by this person.
In a small old study, a scholar reads beside the window while a single loquat tree stands in the courtyard. The intimate room gathers memories of family and changing years.
Also known as Zi Xifu · Hao Zhenchuan · Gui Xi Fu
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Gui Youguang, courtesy name Xifu and literary name Zhenchuan, came from Kunshan in Suzhou prefecture. He passed the provincial examination in 1540 but then failed the metropolitan examination eight times, meanwhile teaching by the river at Anting in Jiading, where his students often numbered several hundred. He finally passed in 1565 at the age of sixty and became magistrate of Changxing in Zhejiang; at odds with his superiors, he was moved in 1569 to an assistant prefect's post in Shunde overseeing horse administration. In 1570, recommended by Gao Gong and Zhao Zhenji, he became an assistant minister of the Nanjing Court of the Imperial Stud, working in the Grand Secretariat on the Veritable Records of the Jiajing emperor, and he died the next year. His prose dwells on domestic life, as in "Xiangji Studio" and his sketch of his late mother. Wang Shizhen, who led the literary world and had long opposed his views, in old age wrote a eulogy ranking him with Han Yu and Ouyang Xiu.
Life and times
Dates 1507 CE–1571 CE