Writers › Writer / Poet
Sun Wanshou
Poet who passed from the Northern Qi into the Sui, courtesy name Xianqi, whose Yuan Shu Jiangnan Ji Jingyi Qinyou, written in exile on the southern frontier, was widely recited; he ended as a judicial officer.
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 Xianqi · Second courtesy name Xia'nian
Sun Wanshou, courtesy name Xianqi, also Xia'nian, was from Wuqiang in Xindu (modern Wuqiang, Hebei), son of Sun Linghui, Erudite of the Northern Qi Imperial Academy. He studied the Five Classics under Xiong Anshang and at seventeen held a court post in the Qi. Under the Sui he served Prince Teng, Yang Zan, as literary attendant, was convicted and sent to garrison duty south of the Yangtze, and wrote the pentasyllabic poem Yuan Shu Jiangnan Ji Jingyi Qinyou, widely recited in his day. Around 604 he was literary attendant to Yang Jian, Prince of Qi, and later became Judicial Officer of the Court of Judicial Review, dying in that post at fifty-two. His collected works ran to ten chapters.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; died aged fifty-two; attested in the Renshou years (601–604 CE)