Song Jing

Also known as Guangping Jungong · Xingguo Gong · Wen Zhen

Song Jing, from Nanhe in Xingzhou (in modern Hebei), passed the jinshi examination at about twenty; as vice censor-in-chief under Empress Wu he repeatedly impeached her favourites Zhang Yizhi and Zhang Changzong. In 710, under Emperor Ruizong, he became minister of personnel with chief-minister rank and worked with Yao Chong to cancel irregular appointments, but was demoted after urging that Princess Taiping be sent to live in Luoyang. As governor-general of Guangzhou early in the Kaiyuan era he taught the people to roof their houses with fired tiles instead of thatch, cutting the toll of fires. He succeeded Yao Chong as chief minister in 716, kept strictly to the law and refused private favours until he left office in 720; he was later made Duke of Guangping and Right Chancellor. He died in 737 aged seventy-five and was named Wenzhen. The Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government (Zizhi tongjian) pairs him with Yao Chong as the model ministers of the later Tang, as Fang and Du were of the earlier.