Writers › Writer / Poet
Zong Chen
Ming poet and essayist from Xinghua, one of the Later Seven Masters, whose Letter in Reply to Liu Yizhang mocks the fawning at the gates of the powerful
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 Zixiang · Hao Fangcheng
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Zong Chen, courtesy name Zixiang, was a native of Xinghua near Yangzhou and passed the metropolitan examination in 1550. From a post in the Ministry of Justice he moved to the evaluation bureau of the Ministry of Personnel, then withdrew on grounds of illness to a study he built on Baihua Islet before returning to office in the appointments bureau and the bureau of honours. Because Yan Song disliked him, he was sent out as an assistant administration commissioner in Fujian. When Japanese pirates pressed on the city he held the west gate, took in some ten thousand villagers and helped drive the raiders off. Promoted to education intendant of Fujian, he died in office in 1560, and the History of Ming (Mingshi) notes that scholars and commoners wept for him. A member of Li Panlong and Wang Shizhen's circle, he is counted among the Later Seven Masters, and his Letter in Reply to Liu Yizhang, a sketch of grovelling office-seekers, was chosen for the anthology Guwen guanzhi.
Life and times
Dates 1525 CE–1560 CE