Writers › Writer / Poet
Li Xun
Former Shu lyricist of Persian descent from Zizhou whose southern-scene songs fill thirty-seven places in the Among the Flowers anthology
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 Derun · Tusheng Bosi
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Li Xun, courtesy name Derun, lived at Zizhou in Shu; his forebears were Persian merchants, and because he was born and raised in Shu he was nicknamed the 'native-born Persian'. He sat the examinations of the Former Shu state as a licentiate, and his sister Li Shunxian, a poet, became a consort of its last ruler, Wang Yan. His lyrics often describe the waterways and fishing villages of the south, and his set of 'Southern Country' songs portrays life in Lingnan. Zhao Chongzuo's Among the Flowers (Huajian ji), compiled under the Later Shu, includes thirty-seven of his lyrics, while his own collection, the Qiongyao ji, is lost. He also knew materia medica and wrote the Overseas Materia Medica (Haiyao bencao) on drugs imported from abroad; it too is lost, but passages survive in later pharmacopoeias.
Life and times
Dates c. 855 CE–c. 930 CE