Writers › Writer / Poet
Wang Ji
Poet of the Sui-Tang transition, called Master of the Eastern Shore, a hard-drinking recluse whose plain verse and Wine Classic anticipate early Tang pastoral poetry.
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 Courtesy name Wugong · Master of the Eastern Shore
Wang Ji, courtesy name Wugong and sobriquet Master of the Eastern Shore, came from Longmen in Jiangzhou (modern Hejin, Shanxi) and lived across the Sui-Tang change. He was a proofreader in the palace library and magistrate of Liuhe in the late Daye years, but was impeached for drinking and neglecting duty and resigned. Under early Tang he was called as a court attendant at the Chancellery, then retired to the Eastern Shore. He wrote the Jiu Jing (Wine Classic), and his collected works, Dongguzi Ji, were arranged by Lu Cai in five scrolls; Gazing Across the Wilds is a landmark early Tang regulated poem.
Life and times
Dates 590 CE–644 CE