Writers › Writer / Poet
Bao Zhao
Liu Song poet of humble family, known as Adjutant Bao, whose eighteen Imitations of the Hard Road widened the range of the seven-syllable ballad
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 Mingyuan
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Bao Zhao, courtesy name Mingyuan, came from Donghai and from a humble family. The History of Song, in an appendix to a princely biography, records that he presented poems to Liu Yiqing, Prince of Linchuan, and was given a post in his household. Under Emperor Xiaowu he served as a drafter in the Secretariat and then as magistrate of Moling and of Yongjia. In 466, when Liu Zixu, Prince of Linhai, rose at Jingzhou in support of the rival claimant Liu Zixun, Bao Zhao was his adjutant, and he was killed by soldiers when the revolt collapsed. His eighteen Imitations of the Hard Road (Ni xinglu nan), mostly in seven-syllable lines, voice the frustration of a man without family backing; he also wrote the Rhapsody on the Ruined City and a letter to his sister from the Dalei shore. Yu Yan compiled his works in the Southern Qi, and Du Fu likened Li Bai's verse to that of the free and graceful Adjutant Bao.
Life and times
Dates c. 414 CE–466 CE