Writers › Writer / Poet
Li Chong
Eastern Jin scholar and poet, courtesy name Hongdu, from Jiangxia, who as Grand Chronicler reorganized the imperial library under a four-division scheme later widely used.
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 Hongdu
Li Chong, courtesy name Hongdu, came from Jiangxia (modern Anlu, Hubei) and was a scholar and poet of the Eastern Jin. Summoned by Wang Dao under Emperor Cheng and then recruited by Chu Pou as a secretary, he asked for a local post and became magistrate of Shan. After mourning for his mother he was appointed Grand Chronicler, oversaw the cataloguing of the imperial library and set up the four-division classification that later generations followed; he died as Secretary of the Central Secretariat. He wrote commentaries on the Analects, the Hanlin Lun and annotations on the Book of Documents and Book of Changes, mostly lost; the Yutai Xinyong preserves his poem 'Teasing a Friend'.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; served from the reign of Emperor Cheng of Jin (325–342 CE), rising to Secretary of the Central Secretariat