Writers › Writer / Poet
He Zhizhang
Tang poet and calligrapher from Yuezhou who rose to director of the Palace Library, hailed Li Bai as a banished immortal and retired home as a Daoist priest in 744
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 Jizhen · Siming Kuangke
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
He Zhizhang, courtesy name Jizhen, came from Yongxing in Yuezhou (now Xiaoshan, Hangzhou) and passed the jinshi examination in 695. In the Kaiyuan era Zhang Yue brought him into the Lizheng Hall editorial office, and he rose through vice minister of rites and academician to director of the Palace Library. In old age he called himself the Madman of Siming; a writer of cursive and clerical script, he was grouped with Zhang Xu, Bao Rong and Zhang Ruoxu as the Four Scholars of Wu. Reading Li Bai's writings in Chang'an early in the Tianbao era, he called Li a banished immortal. In 744 he asked to become a Daoist priest and go home, turning his house into the Qianqiu Abbey; Emperor Xuanzong granted him a stretch of Mirror Lake and saw him off with a poem, and he died that year aged eighty-six. Du Fu's Song of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup begins with him riding his horse as if rocking in a boat.
Life and times
- 659 CEBorn
Tang - 744 CEDied
Works
Literature · Sayings4- My Native Accent UnchangedTangLine from He Zhizhang's Returning Home: the hair has greyed, the accent has not
- Dressed in Green Jade: He Zhizhang's Ode to the WillowTangFamous line from He Zhizhang's Ode to the Willow: a tree dressed all in green jade
- Left Home Young, Came Back OldTangLine from He Zhizhang's poem on returning home: gone as a youth, back as an old man
- The Spring Breeze Like a Pair of ScissorsTangLine from He Zhizhang's Ode to the Willow: the spring wind cuts the new leaves
- Literature · Poetry3
- Occasional Poem on Returning Home (I)TangHe Zhizhang's quatrain on returning home in his eighties, a stranger to the village children
- Ode to the WillowTangHe Zhizhang's quatrain on a willow in early spring, its leaves cut by the scissors of the wind
- Written at the Yuan Family VillaTangHe Zhizhang drops in on a stranger's villa for its woods and springs, with his own wine money