Writers › Writer / Poet
Zheng Wenbao
Official and writer who passed from Southern Tang to Song service and recorded Southern Tang anecdotes, source of 'beating the grass to startle the snake'.
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 Zhongxian · Zi Boyu
Zheng Wenbao, courtesy names Zhongxian and Boyu, from Ninghua in Tingzhou, served the Southern Tang as a collator before passing the Song jinshi examination in 983 and holding posts such as Vice Fiscal Commissioner of Shaanxi, where he was noted for frontier planning. A poet and seal-script calligrapher, he wrote the Nan Tang Jinshi and Jiangbiao Zhi on Southern Tang affairs. The story behind 'beating the grass to startle the snake' is recorded in the Nan Tang Jinshi.
Life and times
Dates 953 CE–1013 CE