Writers › Writer / Poet
Dai Shulun
Mid-Tang poet who rose to Military Commissioner of Rongguan, writing on village life and frontier scenes; Nü Geng Tian Xing and Bian Cheng Qu are among his best-known works.
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 Yougong · Alternative courtesy name Cigong
Dai Shulun, courtesy name Yougong, also Cigong, was from Jintan in Runzhou (modern Jintan, Changzhou, Jiangsu) and was born in 732. He joined Liu Yan's staff with the rank of Investigating Censor, collected taxes in Jingnan in 769, became magistrate of Dongyang in 780, later served as prefect of Fuzhou, and in 788 was posted as prefect of Rongzhou and Military Commissioner of Rongguan, dying in office in 789. His verse often depicts village life, with Nü Geng Tian Xing and Bian Cheng Qu as representative works; the Complete Tang Poems preserves over three hundred poems under his name, some of them spurious.
Life and times
Dates 732–789 CE