Writers › Writer / Poet
Wang Yucheng
Northern Song poet and prose writer styled Yuanzhi from Juye, thrice demoted and finally exiled to Huangzhou, author of the Xiaochu Ji.
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 Yuanzhi · Wang of Huangzhou
Wang Yucheng, courtesy name Yuanzhi, came from Juye and was a leading Northern Song writer. After the jinshi of 983 he rose from county registrar to Hanlin academician but was demoted three times for plain speaking, the last to Huangzhou in 998, which gave him the name Wang of Huangzhou. He died at Qizhou in 1001, aged 48. He followed Du Fu and Bai Juyi in verse and wrote plain prose; his Xiaochu Ji and the Huangzhou bamboo-tower essay are best known, and Ouyang Xiu admired him.
Life and times
Dates 954 CE-1001 CE