WEI ZHUANG (C. 836-910)

Wei Zhuang came from Duling, near the Tang capital of Changan (present-day Xian, Shanxi Province), and despite coming from a distinguished family, had a troubled life. His parents died when he was young, and the family declined, but despite his poverty he found himself an education and eventually became a high official. When he was a young man, the country fell into warfare between warlords, and in these times of agitation his life was displaced and transient. He tried several times to take the highest imperial examinations, but failed, succeeding only in 894. He was given a minor post in the capital, and then was posted to Sichuan, where he came to know Wang Jian. After the fall of the Tang Dynasty in 907, he worked for Wang Jian, who had proclaimed himself the new emperor of Shu, helping to form the new state and coming to be Grand Councilor to the emperor. He lived in this period in Chengdu, and, being a great fan of Du Fu's poetry, bought his old home to renovate and live in. He is well-known for his lyric poems (ci-form poems), 53 of which survive, and for a long narrative poem titled "The Lament of the Lady of Chin," which depicts the fall of Changan to rebel forces in 881. Later, he suppressed this poem, having it left out of his collected poems, and it disappeared for over a thousand years, only being discovered in 1899 in a cache of manuscripts discovered in the caves of Dunhuang. With Li Yu, Wen Tingyun, and Feng Yansi, he is considered to be one of the four early masters of lyric-form verse, and he often writes erotically-charged or love-lorn boudoir-theme poems. He also compiled an important anthology of Tang dynasty poetry.
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To the Tune of "Missing the Emperor's Hometown"

A spring outing,
apricot petals blown all over his head,
who is that young man in the street?
So handsome,
I want to marry him
for all my life
and even if he leaves me
I won't feel ashamed.

        ---Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping