Writers › Writer / Poet
Wei Meng
Early Western Han poet from Pengcheng who tutored three kings of Chu in succession and wrote the four-character Admonition poem before moving to Zou.
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 Wei Meng, tutor to the King Yuan of Chu
Wei Meng, of Pengcheng origin, was an early Western Han poet who tutored three successive kings of Chu: Liu Jiao, Liu Yingke and Liu Wu. When Liu Wu fell into dissipation, he wrote the four-character Admonition poem recalling the Chu ancestors' achievements and urging the king to learn from the past; he then resigned and moved to Zou in the state of Lu, where he wrote the poem 'In Zou' expressing longing for home and respect for the ritual culture of Zou and Lu. Both poems are preserved in the Hanshu biography of Wei Xian, though scholars still debate whether Wei Meng wrote them himself.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active in the Chu kingdom of the early Western Han, c. 201–154 BCE