Writers › Writer / Poet
Chen Hong
Mid-Tang writer who in 806 wrote the Tale of Everlasting Sorrow, the prose companion to Bai Juyi's poem on Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei.
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 Daliang
Chen Hong, courtesy name Daliang, was a mid-Tang man of letters with a historian's bent. He passed the jinshi examination in 805 and later served as an erudite of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices and as a director in the ministries. In 806, when Bai Juyi was sheriff of Zhouzhi, Chen and Wang Zhifu visited Xianyou Temple with him and talked over the story of Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei. Bai wrote the poem Song of Everlasting Sorrow and Chen wrote the prose tale that was placed before it, and the two have circulated together ever since. The New Book of Tang also lists a short work of his on the Kaiyuan era, and he compiled a chronicle, the Datong ji, now lost.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; passed the jinshi examination in 805 and wrote the Tale of Everlasting Sorrow in 806