Writers › Writer / Poet
Shen Quanqi
Early Tang court poet who, paired with Song Zhiwen as Shen-Song, helped fix the tonal rules of five- and seven-syllable regulated verse
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 Yunqing
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Shen Quanqi, courtesy name Yunqing, came from Neihuang in Xiangzhou and passed the examination in 675, the same year as Song Zhiwen. Under Empress Wu he served as an assistant in the music office, a palace usher, an examiner in the Ministry of Personnel and a supervising secretary. Accused of taking bribes as examiner, he was imprisoned, and because he had attached himself to Zhang Yizhi he was exiled to Huanzhou in present-day Vietnam after the Zhang brothers fell in 705. Pardoned soon after, he returned as a court diarist and academician, writing poems on command at Emperor Zhongzong's banquets, and later rose to drafter in the secretariat and steward to the heir before dying early in the Kaiyuan era. Paired with Song Zhiwen as Shen-Song, he helped settle the parallelism and tonal patterns of five- and seven-syllable regulated verse. His poem Dubujian, opening with the young wife of the Lu family in her saffron hall, was chosen for the Qing anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems.
Life and times
Dates c. 656 CE–c. 715 CE