Writers › Writer / Poet
Fan Qin
Late Eastern Han writer, courtesy name Xiubo, who served as Chief Secretary to Prime Minister Cao Cao and wrote verse and rhapsodies in the Jian'an period; his Ding Qing Shi is his best-known poem.
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 Courtesy name Xiubo
Fan Qin, courtesy name Xiubo, came from Yingchuan commandery (around Yuzhou, Henan); his birth year is unknown and he died in 218. He first attached himself to Liu Biao in Jingzhou and later served Prime Minister Cao Cao as chief secretary in charge of documents. A skilled writer of verse and fu, he described Zhang Liao's 209 campaign against Chen Lan and Mei Cheng in his Zheng Tianshan Fu, and his long pentasyllabic Ding Qing Shi, in a woman's voice, is preserved in the Jade Terrace anthology and is his best-known surviving work.
Life and times
Dates Birth year unknown; died 218 CE