Writers › Writer / Poet
Yang Yun (Ziyou)
Western Han scholar-statesman (c. 100 BCE–54 BCE), maternal grandson of Sima Qian who first published the Shiji, author of the defiant 'Letter in Reply to Sun Huizong'.
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 Yang Ziyou · Marquis Pingtong
Yang Yun (c. 100 BCE–54 BCE) was a distinguished Western Han official and literary figure. As Sima Qian's grandson, he published the hidden manuscripts of Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji). Stripped of his noble titles for uncompromising outspokenness, his 'Letter to Sun Huizong' stands as a monument of classical Chinese epistolary literature.
Life and times
Dates c. 100 BCE–54 BCE