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Cui Hao

High Tang poet from Bianzhou whose regulated verse on Yellow Crane Tower Yan Yu ranked first among all Tang poems of that form

Also known as Bian Zhouren · Shang Shu Si Xun Yuan Wai Lang

Cui Hao came from Bianzhou and, according to the Biographies of Tang Talents (Tang caizi zhuan), passed the metropolitan examination in 723. The Old Tang History (Jiu Tang shu) describes a gifted man of loose conduct who loved gambling and wine and who married only beautiful women, sending each away when she displeased him, several times over. Yin Fan's anthology Gems of the Rivers and Mountains (Heyue yingling ji) says his youthful verse was frivolous but that a stint on the frontier late in life gave it a hard edge and a full picture of army life. He rose to vice director in the Bureau of Merit Titles and died in 754. The Song critic Yan Yu, in Canglang's Remarks on Poetry (Canglang shihua), ranked his Yellow Crane Tower first among Tang regulated verses of seven-character lines. The story that Li Bai climbed the tower, read the poem and declined to write his own comes from the Biographies of Tang Talents and is anecdotal.

Life and times

  1. c. 704 CEBornTang
  2. 754 CEDied

Works

  1. Literature · Poetry3
    1. Yellow Crane TowerTangCui Hao's regulated verse at Yellow Crane Tower, moving from immortal legend to homesickness
    2. Song of Changgan: The Chance MeetingTangCui Hao's folk-style quatrain: a woman on the river stops her boat to ask a stranger's home
    3. Passing Through HuayinTangCui Hao passes Mount Hua and urges travellers chasing fame to stay and seek long life
  2. Literature · Sayings2
    1. Homesick on the Misty River WavesTangFamous line from Cui Hao's Yellow Crane Tower: misty river waves that stir homesickness
    2. The Yellow Crane Gone, Never to ReturnTangIdiom from Cui Hao's Yellow Crane Tower: what has gone will never come back