Writers › Writer / Poet
Wang Bao (Northern Zhou)
Man of letters of the Langye Wang clan who served Liang, was taken north after the fall of Jiangling in 554, and served Western Wei and Northern Zhou alongside Yu Xin.
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 Wang Bao of the Northern and Southern Dynasties
Wang Bao, courtesy name Ziyuan, came from Linyi in Langye (modern Linyi, Shandong), a ninth-generation descendant of Wang Dao, and was a parallel-prose writer and poet of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. He served Liang as secretary and governor of Ancheng, rising under Emperor Yuan to Minister of Personnel and Left Vice-Director; when Jiangling fell to Western Wei in 554 he was carried north and served Western Wei and Northern Zhou, ending as Junior Minister of Works and governor of Yizhou. Over forty poems survive; the Sui bibliography lists a 21-scroll collection, now lost. Frontier pieces such as Yange Xing and Crossing North of the River are well known.
Life and times
Dates 513 CE–576 CE