Writers › Writer / Poet
Wang Bo
Early Tang poet and prose writer, author of the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng, who died after falling into the sea on his way to visit his exiled father
Mural of Preface to the Prince of Teng's Pavilion, a work by this person.
Tengwang Pavilion rises above autumn water at sunset as a wild duck crosses the rosy clouds and guests gather below. The meeting of sky, river and pavilion gives the scene its soaring breadth.
Also known as Zi Zian · Wang Sanlang
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Wang Bo, courtesy name Zi'an, came from Longmen in Jiangzhou (modern Hejin, Shanxi) and was a grandson of the Sui Confucian Wang Tong. He passed a special examination as a boy and became a compiler for Li Xian, Prince of Pei, but when the princes held cockfights he wrote a mock proclamation against the Prince of Ying's cock, and Emperor Gaozong, seeing it as setting his sons against one another, dismissed him. Later, as an administrator in Guozhou, he hid and then killed a government slave named Cao Da; sentenced to death, he was saved by an amnesty, but his father Wang Fuzhi was demoted to Jiaozhi. Travelling south to see his father, he wrote the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng at Hongzhou. In 676 he fell into the sea during a crossing and died of the shock. Du Fu's line on the style of Wang, Yang, Lu and Luo names him first of the Four Paragons of the early Tang.
Life and times
Dates 650 CE–676 CE