Writers › Cultural Persona
Jiao Zhongqing
Male protagonist of the long narrative poem Southeast Fly the Peacocks, a late-Han Lujiang clerk who hangs himself after his wife, sent away by his mother, drowns herself.
In lantern light and drifting smoke, a row of painted theatrical masks stands on a wooden rail beneath a glowing paper dragon lantern and hanging red lanterns; a folding screen painted with a river, a bridge and hills stands at the right, with a bronze burner and small lamps on the floor.
Also known as Minor clerk of Lujiang commandery · The Clerk (as named in the poem)
- Roles
- Cultural Persona
Jiao Zhongqing is the cultural persona at the center of the narrative poem Southeast Fly the Peacocks (originally titled An Old Poem for the Wife of Jiao Zhongqing). Its preface says that in the Jian'an era of the late Han, the wife of Jiao Zhongqing, a minor clerk of Lujiang, was sent home by his mother and drowned herself, after which he hanged himself from a tree in the courtyard. He appears only in this poem, which survives first in the Liang-dynasty anthology Yutai xinyong. This entry registers a cultural persona, not a historically verified individual.
Life and times
Dates Set by the poem's preface in the Jian'an era of the late Han; first preserved in the Liang-dynasty Yutai xinyong