Writers › Writer / Poet
Zhong Sicheng
Yuan playwright and song writer from Kaifeng, living in Hangzhou, whose Register of Ghosts records the dramatists of the Jin and Yuan and their plays
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 Jixian · Hao Chouzhai
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Zhong Sicheng, courtesy name Jixian and styled Chouzhai, came from Daliang, today's Kaifeng, and spent much of his life in Hangzhou, where he served as a clerk in the Jiangzhe provincial government. In 1330 he finished the Register of Ghosts (Lugui bu) with his own preface. It lists the zaju and sanqu writers of the Jin and Yuan, both the dead and those still living, with their names, home towns, offices and titles of works, and much of what is known about Guan Hanqing and his contemporaries comes from it. His own zaju plays, among them Duke Zhuang of Zheng, The Peach Banquet and The Feigned Tour of Yunmeng, are lost; his songs were collected as Chouzhai yuefu.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; preface to the Register of Ghosts dated 1330