Writers › Writer / Poet
Ouyang Jiong
Shu minister and lyricist who wrote the preface to the Among the Flowers anthology in 940 and ended his career in the Song court
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.
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Ouyang Jiong came from Huayang in Yizhou and served the Former Shu as a secretariat drafter; when that state fell he followed its last ruler Wang Yan to Luoyang, received a minor post at Qinzhou from the Later Tang, and returned to Chengdu after Meng Zhixiang took Shu. Under the Later Shu he rose through the Hanlin Academy to chief minister, and in 940 he wrote the preface to Zhao Chongzuo's Among the Flowers (Huajian ji), which also includes seventeen of his own lyrics. After the Later Shu surrendered to the Song in 965 he went to Kaifeng with Meng Chang and served as an attendant and Hanlin academician; Emperor Taizu, told that he played the flute well, once called him to a side hall to perform. He died in 971 at seventy-six, and the History of Song appends his biography to its account of the Meng house of Western Shu.
Life and times
Dates 896 CE–971 CE