Writers › Writer / Poet
Cui Hu
Mid-Tang poet remembered for 'Written at a Village South of the Capital' and its line about a face and peach blossoms glowing together.
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 Yingong
Cui Hu, courtesy name Yingong, was a native of Boling who passed the jinshi examination in 796 and later served as Metropolitan Governor, Censor-in-Chief and Military Commissioner of Lingnan. Few of his poems survive, the best known being 'Written at a Village South of the Capital', with its line 'a face and the peach blossoms glowing red together'. Meng Qi's Benshi Shi tells the story behind the poem, which became the source of the idiom 'a face among peach blossoms'.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; jinshi 796 CE, still in office in the Dahe era (827–835)