Writers › Writer / Poet
Li Ao
Mid-Tang prose writer and thinker, a follower of Han Yu, whose Fuxing Shu on restoring human nature influenced Neo-Confucianism.
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 Zi Xizhi · Li of Xiangyang
Li Ao, courtesy name Xizhi, came from Chenliu in Bianzhou (modern Kaifeng), with ancestral roots in Longxi. He passed the jinshi examination in 798 and served as erudite of the Imperial University, historian, and vice director of the Bureau of Evaluation, with spells as prefect of Langzhou and Luzhou; later he was prefect of Tanzhou, surveillance commissioner of Hunan and military governor of Shannan East, and died at Xiangyang with the posthumous name Wen. He learned prose from Han Yu. His Fuxing Shu urges a return to one's true nature and influenced Neo-Confucian thought; he also wrote Han Yu's official biography.
Life and times
Dates c. 772–c. 841 CE (death year variously given as 836, 838 or 841)