Writers › Writer / Poet
Tian Rucheng
Ming official and scholar whose West Lake gazetteer and its supplement record Hangzhou street arts such as taozhen, ballads sung by blind performers to the pipa.
Mural of the cultural record “Daoqing and Yugu Fish-Drum Ballads”, which this person is tied to.
Also known as Zi Shuhe · Hao Yuyang
Tian Rucheng, courtesy name Shuhe, was a native of Qiantang, present-day Hangzhou. He passed the provincial examination in 1519 and the metropolitan examination in 1526, served in the Nanjing Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Rites and as an education official in Guangdong and Fujian, and retired on grounds of illness in 1541 to write. His works include the West Lake Gazetteer, its supplement the Xihu Youlan Zhiyu, and the Yanjiao Jiwen. The supplement describes blind men and women of Hangzhou singing old and new stories to the pipa, a form called taozhen, and scholars often cite it as an early record of the tanci ballad tradition.
Life and times
Dates 1501 CE–1557 CE