Writers › Writer / Poet
Yuan Zhen
Mid-Tang poet and chief minister who traded verses with Bai Juyi as the pair Yuan-Bai and wrote the tale of Yingying, source of The Story of the Western Wing
Mural of the event “Poetry Paper at Huanhua Stream”, which this person took part in.
From the Zhenyuan era of the Tang, Xue Tao lived in Chengdu and won the notice of Wei Gao, Military Governor of Jiannan, who by tradition invited her to compose verse at his banquets; she became known as the Female Collator. Living by Huanhua Stream, she had small sheets of poem paper made, known as Xue Tao paper, and exchanged poems with Yuan Zhen and other poets.
Also known as Zi Weizhi · Yuan Xiang
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Yuan Zhen, courtesy name Weizhi, came from Henan (Luoyang) and descended from the Tuoba royal house of the Northern Wei; his father died when he was eight and his mother taught him to read. He passed the placement examination with Bai Juyi in 803, and in 806 he placed first in the decree examination and was made a reminder. Returning to the capital in 810, he was humiliated by a eunuch in a quarrel over lodgings at the Fushui post station, yet it was he who was demoted to Jiangling, and later to Tongzhou. In 822 he became chief minister but lost the post after about three months; he then served as governor of Tongzhou in Guanzhong, surveillance commissioner of eastern Zhejiang and military governor at Wuchang, where he died in 831. His long exchange of poems with Bai Juyi gave rise to the term Yuanhe style. His prose tale of Yingying passed through Master Dong's medley into Wang Shifu's Yuan drama The Story of the Western Wing (Xixiang ji).
Life and times
Dates 779 CE–831 CE
- 785Poetry Paper at Huanhua StreamTook partage 6
- 805Xue Tao Paper and Poetic Exchangesage 26