Writers › Writer / Poet
Yin Zhu
Northern Song prose master and official, known as the Master of Henan, who asked to share Fan Zhongyan's demotion in 1036.
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 Shilu · Master of Henan
Yin Zhu, courtesy name Shilu, was a native of Luoyang known as the Master of Henan. A jinshi of 1024, he served in the academies and on the northwestern frontier, where he became expert in border affairs. When Fan Zhongyan was demoted in 1036, Yin declared himself Fan's partisan and asked to share his punishment, and was sent to oversee the wine tax at Yingzhou. His terse, disciplined prose made him, with Ouyang Xiu, a pioneer of the Song classical-prose revival. Ouyang's 'Letter to Remonstrator Gao' cites Yin's demotion in contrast to Gao's silence.
Life and times
Dates c. 1002–1047 CE