Writers › Writer / Poet
Wang Shenzhong
Jinjiang prose writer who abandoned Qin and Han models for Ouyang Xiu and Zeng Gong and, paired with Tang Shunzhi, set the course of the Ming Tang-Song school
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 Daosi · Hao Zunyan
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Wang Shenzhong, courtesy name Daosi, came from Jinjiang in Fujian and passed the palace examination in 1526 at eighteen. In the ministries he studied with Tang Shunzhi, Li Kaixian, Zhao Shichun and other young officials, and in 1533, when the grand secretary Zhang Fujing asked to see him, he declined, losing a place in the Hanlin Academy and later being slandered and demoted to assistant prefect of Changzhou. He went on to serve as education intendant in Shandong and in Jiangxi and Henan, until the 1541 evaluation, coloured by his quarrel with the grand secretary Xia Yan, removed him from office as careless. At first he admired only Qin and Han prose, but he burned his early work and modelled himself on Ouyang Xiu and Zeng Gong, and Tang Shunzhi followed him, and the two were paired as Wang and Tang. He taught at home until his death at fifty-one, and his writings survive as the Zunyan ji; Li Panlong had been one of the students he promoted in Shandong.
Life and times
Dates 1509 CE–1559 CE