Writers › Writer / Poet
Li Hua
Tang prose writer from the Li clan of Zhao Commandery, ranked with Xiao Yingshi, author of the Diao Guzhanchang Wen and a forerunner of the ancient-prose movement.
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 Xiashu · Also Zi Shuwen
Li Hua, courtesy name Xiashu, came from Zanhuang in Zhaozhou and belonged to the Li clan of Zhao. He passed the jinshi in 735 and the erudite-and-eloquent examination in 743, became collating editor, then investigating censor and remonstrator. Seized in the An Lushan rebellion and forced to take a post under the rebels, he was demoted to registrar of Hangzhou after the rebellion's end, soon resigned, and lived in retirement at Shanyang as a Buddhist until his death in 774. His best-known piece is 'Lament for the Ancient Battlefield', and with Xiao Yingshi he is regarded as an early advocate of ancient-style prose.
Life and times
Dates c. 714 CE–774 CE