Writers › Writer / Poet
Xiong Mengxiang
Late Yuan scholar from Fuzhou in Jiangxi who headed the White Deer Grotto Academy and, retired in the hills west of Dadu, wrote the gazetteer Xijin zhi.
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 Zide · Hao Songyun Daoren
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Xiong Mengxiang, also written Mengxiang with a different character, courtesy name Zide, sobriquet Songyun Daoren, came from Fuzhou (modern Fengcheng) in Jiangxi. Recommended for exceptional talent at the end of Yuan, he became head of the White Deer Grotto Academy and later supervisor of Confucian schools for Dadu circuit and assistant director of the Chongwen Directorate, before retiring through age and illness. In retirement at Zhaitang village in the hills west of Dadu he wrote the Xijin zhi, a gazetteer of the capital's walls, wards, offices, temples, customs and people, among the earliest works devoted to Beijing. The original is lost; a reconstruction, Xijin zhi jiyi, has been gathered from the Yongle dadian and other books. He was known as a painter and calligrapher and is said to have lived past ninety.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active in the Zhizheng era at the end of Yuan (c. 1341–1368)