Writers › Writer / Poet
Han Yu
Mid-Tang essayist and official who led the return to ancient-style prose and was banished to Chaozhou for his memorial against the Buddha relic
Mural of On Teachers, a work by this person.
In a plain hall, a teacher guides students of different ages as one boy raises a question beside the scrolls. The exchange gives form to the essay’s belief that learning depends on the teacher.
Also known as Zi Tuizhi · Changli Xiansheng · Han Changli · Hanwen Gong
Han Yu, courtesy name Tuizhi, came from Heyang in Henan (modern Mengzhou) and, claiming Changli as his ancestral seat, was known as Han Changli. He passed the jinshi examination in 792 and, as an investigating censor in 803, was demoted to magistrate of Yangshan after reporting drought and famine around the capital. In 817 he served as adjutant to Pei Du in the campaign that subdued Huaixi and wrote the stele text commemorating it; in 819 his Memorial on the Buddha Bone had him exiled as prefect of Chaozhou. He urged a return to the prose of the pre-Qin and Han masters in place of parallel prose, writing pieces such as On the Way (Yuan dao) and On Teachers (Shi shuo), and campaigned for ancient-style prose together with Liu Zongyuan. He died in Chang'an in 824 as Vice-Minister of Personnel and was given the posthumous name Wen. Su Shi's inscription for Han Yu's temple at Chaozhou said his writing revived prose after eight dynasties of decline.
Life and times
Dates 768 CE–824 CE