Writers › Writer / Poet
Wang Zhihuan
High Tang poet known from only six surviving poems, including 'On the Stork Tower' and a 'Liangzhou Song', who held minor county posts and died in office in 742
Mural of On Ascending Stork Tower, a work by this person.
At sunset above the Yellow River, a traveler climbs the Stork Tower for a wider view of water and sky. The upward movement turns the landscape into an image of ambition and renewed vision.
Also known as Zi Jiling
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Wang Zhihuan, courtesy name Jiling, came from a family of Jinyang that had moved to Jiang commandery, and his life is known mainly from an epitaph by Jin Neng. Through family privilege he became registrar of Hengshui in Jizhou, but after being slandered he resigned in disgust and spent fifteen years at home before taking a post as sheriff of Wen'an, where he died in office in the second month of 742, aged fifty-five. The epitaph says his poems were set to music and on everyone's lips, yet only six survive in the Complete Tang Poems (Quan Tangshi), the best known being 'On the Stork Tower' and a 'Liangzhou Song'; the first is attributed by some to Zhu Bin. Xue Yongruo's Tang collection Gathered Oddities (Jiyi ji) tells how he, Wang Changling and Gao Shi sat in a wine pavilion and kept score of how many of each man's poems the singing girls performed. His epitaph, unearthed in the twentieth century, is the main source for his life.
Life and times
Dates 688 CE–742 CE