Writers › Writer / Poet
Hou Fangyu
Shangqiu essayist, son of a Ming minister and one of the Four Young Lords, whose friendship with the courtesan Li Xiang became the story of The Peach Blossom Fan
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 Chaozong · Hao Xueyuan
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Hou Fangyu, courtesy name Chaozong, came from Shangqiu in Henan, the son of the Ming minister of revenue Hou Xun. Living in Nanjing among the pleasure quarters of the Qinhuai, he saw through Ruan Dacheng's attempt to use him to make peace with Chen Zhenhui and Wu Yingji, and broke off contact, earning Ruan's hatred. When Ruan came to power under the Hongguang court and began arresting society members, Hou fled by night to the camp of the general Gao Jie. In 1651 he sat the Henan provincial examination under the Qing and was placed on the supplementary list. He died in January 1655 at thirty-seven by Chinese reckoning. His prose was ranked with that of Wei Xi and Wang Wan as the three masters of the early Qing, and his Biography of Li Ji gave Kong Shangren the material for The Peach Blossom Fan.
Life and times
Dates 1618 CE–1655 CE