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
Dates 659 CE–744 CE