Writers › Writer / Poet
Xie Daoyun
Eastern Jin poet and conversationalist of the Xie clan, niece of Xie An and wife of Wang Ningzhi, remembered for likening falling snow to willow catkins in the wind
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.
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Xie Daoyun, daughter of the general Xie Yi, impressed her uncle Xie An by choosing as the finest line of the Book of Songs one praising the minister Zhongshan Fu. When snow fell at a family gathering and her cousin Xie Lang likened it to salt scattered in the air, she said it was more like willow catkins lifted by the wind. Married to Wang Ningzhi, son of Wang Xizhi, she complained that she had never imagined such a husband; when her brother-in-law Wang Xianzhi was losing a debate, she took up his case from behind a gauze screen and silenced the guests. In 399, when Sun En's rebels took Kuaiji and killed her husband and sons, she went out with a blade and killed several men before capture, then talked the rebels out of killing her grandson Liu Tao. Widowed in Kuaiji, she received the governor Liu Liu, who left full of admiration. The History of Jin says her poems and eulogies circulated widely.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; Eastern Jin