Writers › Writer / Poet
Wang Guan
Northern Song lyricist who called himself the Exile; his lyric collection Guanliu Ji is lost, he wrote the Yangzhou peony treatise Yangzhou Shaoyao Pu, and his parting song to Bao Haoran, set to Bu Suanzi, survives.
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 Tongsou · Known as Zhuke (the Exile)
Wang Guan, courtesy name Tongsou (also given as Dasou), came from Rugao in modern Jiangsu. He studied under Hu Yuan at the Imperial Academy and passed the jinshi examination in 1057. In the Xining years he served as assistant at the Court of Judicial Review and magistrate of Jiangdu county in Yangzhou, where he presented a rhapsody on Yangzhou, was rewarded with a scarlet robe and silver insignia, and wrote a treatise on the peonies of Yangzhou. He is recorded as a Hanlin academician under Emperor Shenzong, dismissed after one of his lyrics offended Empress Dowager Gao. In 1080 he was found to have taken bribes as magistrate of Jiangdu, struck from the rolls and banished to Yongzhou, after which he called himself the Exile. His lyric collection Guanliu Ji is lost; surviving lyrics include pieces to the tunes Bu Suanzi, Linjiang Xian and Gaoyang Tai.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; jinshi graduate of 1057, struck from the rolls and banished to Yongzhou in 1080