Writers › Writer / Poet
Du Lei
Southern Song poet from Nancheng in Fuzhou, courtesy name Ziye, styled Xiaoshan, a staff secretary best known for the quatrain Cold Night.
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 Ziye
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Du Lei, courtesy name Ziye and styled Xiaoshan, was a Southern Song poet from Nancheng in Fuzhou, in present-day Jiangxi. Little is known of his life beyond service as a minor staff secretary; his birth year is unknown and one account has him dying in 1225. His signature piece is the quatrain Cold Night, which opens with tea standing in for wine when a guest arrives on a cold night and the bamboo stove glows, and it is often anthologised among tea poems and in the Qianjia shi.
Life and times
Dates Born unknown; died c. 1225 CE, a Southern Song poet of Nancheng