Writers › Writer / Poet
Song Zihou
Eastern Han poet whose only surviving work is the five-character ballad Dong Jiaorao, first recorded in the Yutai xinyong.
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 Song Zihou, author of Dong Jiaorao
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Song Zihou was an Eastern Han poet whose life and dates cannot be established. Only one poem survives, the five-character Dong Jiaorao, in which a girl picking blossoms by a Luoyang roadside speaks with the flowers, reflecting on fading beauty. First recorded in Xu Ling's Yutai xinyong, it is counted among the earlier literati five-character poems and is said to have influenced later poets such as Cao Zhi; it also appears in Shen Deqian's Gushi yuan.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; an Eastern Han poet