Writers › Writer / Poet
Bai Ting
Hangzhou poet of the Song–Yuan transition whose Yuan-era notes Zhanyuan Jingyu contain the image of 'swallowing a date whole'.
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 Tingyu · Hao Zhanyuan
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Bai Ting, courtesy name Tingyu, from Qiantang (Hangzhou), was born late in the Southern Song and became known for his poetry around the Song–Yuan transition. Under the Yuan he served as a Confucian school instructor in Taiping and Changzhou and as an assistant prefect of Lanxi, retiring to Qixia Hill in old age. His works include the Zhanyuan Ji and the miscellany Zhanyuan Jingyu, the source of the phrase 'swallowing a date whole'.
Life and times
Song
YuanWorks
Literature · Fables1- Swallowing Dates WholeYuanJoke from Bai Ting's Yuan notebook: a man chews pears without swallowing and gulps dates whole
- Literature · Sayings1
- Swallowing Dates WholeSongIdiom from Zhanyuan Jingyu: swallowing ideas whole without digesting them