Writers › Writer / Poet
Pi Rixiu
Late Tang poet and essayist who traded verse with Lu Guimeng at Suzhou, compiled the Pizi wensou, and served Huang Chao's regime in Chang'an before disappearing from the record
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Zi Yishao · Zi Ximei · Lu Menzi · Zuiyin Xiansheng · Jianqi Buyi
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Pi Rixiu, courtesy name first Yishao and later Ximei, came from Jingling near Xiangyang, in present-day Tianmen, Hubei. As a young man he lived as a recluse on Mount Lumen and called himself the Master of Lumen, the Drunken Chanter and the Commoner of Rare Breath. In 866 he gathered his poems and essays into the ten-chapter Pizi wensou, and the next year he passed the jinshi examination. He then joined the staff of Cui Pu, prefect of Suzhou, where he and Lu Guimeng exchanged poems that were collected as the Songling ji, and later served at court as an erudite of the Court of Sacrifices. When Huang Chao took Chang'an in 880, Pi became a Hanlin academician of the rebel Qi state; what happened next is disputed, with accounts saying Huang Chao killed him, that Tang forces did, or that he escaped south. Lu Xun wrote that the short essays of Pi and Lu were a gleam and a cutting edge in a hopeless swamp.
Life and times
Dates c. 838 CE–c. 883 CE