Writers › Writer / Poet
Liu Yuxi
Mid-Tang poet exiled for over twenty years after the failed Yongzhen reform, who reworked Sichuan folk songs into his Bamboo Branch Songs
Mural of Inscription for My Humble Cottage, a work by this person.
A scholar plays an unadorned zither in a humble hut with moss on the steps and grass at the window. Simplicity of surroundings frames a life grounded in learning and integrity.
Also known as Zi Mengde · Liu Binke · Liu Zhongshan · Shi Hao
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Liu Yuxi, courtesy name Mengde, is called a native of Pengcheng in the *Old Book of Tang* (*Jiu Tangshu*), while the *New Book of Tang* (*Xin Tangshu*) says he claimed descent from Zhongshan. He passed the jinshi examination in 793 and, with Liu Zongyuan, joined Wang Shuwen's Yongzhen reform; when it collapsed in 805 he was banished as marshal of Langzhou. Recalled in 815, he offended those in power with a poem on the peach blossoms of the Xuandu Temple and was sent out again as prefect of Lianzhou, later governing Kuizhou and Hezhou; at Kuizhou he wrote 'Bamboo Branch Songs' on local tunes. Back in Chang'an in 828, he revisited the temple and wrote that the former Master Liu had returned. Late in life he held a sinecure in Luoyang and exchanged poems with Bai Juyi; he died in 842 and was posthumously named minister of revenue. Bai Juyi called him a heroic poet, while his authorship of the 'Inscription on a Humble Room' is disputed.
Life and times
Dates 772 CE–842 CE
- 805Yongzhen ReformTook partage 33
- 805Two Wangs, Eight Adjutants Banishedage 33