Writers › Writer / Poet
Du Xunhe
Late Tang poet from Chizhou who wrote plainly of villagers ground down by war and taxes, and became a Hanlin academician under Zhu Wen shortly before his death
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 Yanzhi · Hao Jiu Hua Shan Ren
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Du Xunhe, courtesy name Yanzhi, styled the Hermit of Mount Jiuhua, came from Shidai in Chizhou; Song-dynasty notebooks claim he was the son of a concubine whom Du Mu sent away while prefect of Chizhou. After repeated failures he passed the jinshi examination in 891 at the age of forty-six, then went home because of the disorder of the times. His poems describe the sufferings of ordinary people in plain language; 'The Widow in the Mountains' observes that however deep into the hills she goes, there is no escaping the levies and labor service. He later attached himself to Zhu Wen, military governor of Xuanwu, and early in the Tianyou era was made a Hanlin academician and drafter of edicts, but died of illness soon afterward. The Old History of the Five Dynasties says he used his patron's power to insult the gentry, who wanted him dead, and his poems survive as the Tangfeng ji.
Life and times
Dates 846 CE–904 CE