Writers › Writer / Poet
Yu Xin
Liang court poet who, stranded in the north when Western Wei took Jiangling, served the Northern Zhou and mourned the fall of the south in his Lament for the South
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 Zishan · Xiaozi Lancheng
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Yu Xin, courtesy name Zishan and childhood name Lancheng, was from Xinye in Nanyang, a son of the Liang official Yu Jianwu. Serving the crown prince with Xu Ling, he wrote ornate verse copied all over the capital as the Xu-Yu style. In Hou Jing's rebellion he was sent to hold the Zhuque pontoon bridge but fell back when the rebels arrived, then fled to Jiangling, where Emperor Yuan made him Marquis of Wukang. Sent as envoy to Western Wei in 554, he was in Chang'an when Wei armies took Jiangling and was never allowed home, serving the Northern Zhou as a general, governor of Luozhou and judicial minister. When peace with the Chen let other southern exiles return, only he and Wang Bao were kept back. In old age he wrote the Lament for the South (Ai Jiangnan fu), the Rhapsody on a Dead Tree and twenty-seven poems on his feelings; he died in 581. Du Fu wrote that Yu Xin's writing grew finer as he aged.
Life and times
Dates 513 CE–581 CE