Wang Xianzhi

Also known as Zi Zijing · Xiao Sheng

Wang Xianzhi, courtesy name Zijing, was the seventh son of the calligrapher Wang Xizhi; the History of Jin (Jinshu) says that when he was learning to write at seven or eight, his father tried to snatch the brush from behind him and could not pull it free. He began as a provincial registrar and palace librarian, served as Xie An's chief of staff and as governor of Wuxing, and became director of the secretariat, hence the name Wang Daling. He divorced his first wife, his cousin Xi Daomao, to marry Princess Xin'an, daughter of Emperor Jianwen, and his own daughter became empress to Emperor An. When Xie An wanted him to write the signboard of the new Taiji Hall, he refused outright. Gravely ill in 386, he made a Daoist confession of faults and said he regretted only the divorce, and died in office at forty-three. Under the Southern Dynasties his fame briefly outshone his father's, as Tao Hongjing told Emperor Wu of Liang; his Duck-Head Pill letter is in the Shanghai Museum.