Huang Tingjian

Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), from Fenning (modern Xiushui in northwest Jiangxi province), was a famous poet, calligrapher and essayist. He came from a family of noted scholars and artists, including his mother, Lady Li, a skillful painter and qin player.³ Huang Tingjian is said to have been particularly filial towards her (see image at right).

Huang Tingjian was himself a very precocious student, and when his father died in 1058 Tingjian was sent to Anhui to study with a maternal uncle, Li Chang. Tingjian once wrote a poem on the qin playing of his aunt Li Chongde.⁴

Achieving his jinshi degree in 1067, he was assigned a position in Ruzhou, not far from the Northern Song capital, Kaifeng (Bianqing). Then in 1078 he went to the Imperial Academy in Damingfu (Beijing). In 1081 he held a minor position in Jizhou, central Jiangxi; then in 1084 held another minor position in Depingzhen, Shandong. Because of his association with the "anti-reform faction", which included Su Dongpo, he had never held high position. However, in 1085 "anti-reformers" came to power and Huang was able to return to the capital, where he joined the History Institute then the Academy of Scholarly Worthies (Imperial Library). However, after the reformers returned to power he was sent into exile, in 1094 to Qianzhou in eastern Sichuan, then in 1098 north to nearby Fuzhou. In 1100 he was briefly reprieved and given a position at Ezhou (Wuhan). He traveled there slowly, arriving in 1101, only to be exiled again almost immediately, to Yizhou in Guangxi (1103 - 1105), where he died.

Qinshu Daquan (1591) has several writings by him that concern qin. See in particular,⁵

Folio 18, #46 (qin inscriptions) and
Folio 19B, #94 - #99 (poetry on listening to various qin players).

In addition, he has been associated with several qin melodies, as follows:

At least one handbook says he wrote a melody for Huangyun Qiusai (see 1585)
I do not know of any connection he may have had to northern frontier regions.
Lixing Yuanya includes amongst its 5 melodies for one-string qin a setting of one of his poems.
Hewen Zhuyin Qinpu (Japan) includes a qin setting of his lyrics Ruihe Xian, paralleling Ouyang Xiu's Zuiweng Ting.⁶
His poem Wind in the Pines, remarkable in part for its political commentary,⁷ has the same title as the qin melody Feng Ru Song Ge. However, the lyrics for the qin melody are different, with no apparently political comment.

Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. Huang Tingjian references
48904.575; Bio/2087 黃庭堅，字魯直 style name Luzhi, also called 涪翁 Fuweng and 山谷道人 Daoist of Shan'gu. He was one of "蘇門四學 Sumen sixue", four leading students of Su Shi. Places mentioned in his biography include 洪州分寧 Fenning (modern 修水 Xiushui in northwest Jiangxi); 汝州 Ruzhou, south of the Songshan mountain range in Henan; 大鳴府 Daming Fu (now Beijing); 吉州 Jizhou in Jiangxi; 德平鎮 Depingzhen in Shangdong; 黔州 Qianzhou, south of 涪州 Fuzhou (涪陵 Fuling, down the Yangzi from Chongqing); 鄂州 Ezhou (now Wuhan) in Hubei; and 宜州 Yizhou (northern Guangxi). Also, 戎州 Rongzhou, south of Chengdu in modern Sichuan province.

Nienhauser, Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, pp.447/8, says he was,

"one of the most influential poets of the Northern Song dynasty. He was ranked by his immediate followers as the most important of the five younger disciples of Su Shi and as the father of the Jiang School of Poetry. He is also considered one of the "Four Great Masters" of Song calligraphy."....(His career) was marred by two banishments due to political association with the conservative faction led by Sima Kuang...."

The most complete biography I have found in English for Huang Tingjian is in Alfreda Murck, The Subtle Art of Dissent, pp.158-163. For his calligraphy see Robert E. Harrist and Wen C. Fong, The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection, The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1999. For his poetry see David Palumbio-Liu, The Poetics of Appropriation: The Literary Theory and Practice of Huang Tingjian, 1045-1105, Stanford U. Press, 1993.
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2. The above image is one by 陳少梅 Chen Shaomei (1909-1954) from a set depicting the 二十四孝 24 Paragons of Filial Piety, the title of a book by the Yuan dynasty scholar 郭居敬 Guo Jujing (details of the book can be found on web pages at Rice and SFSU; Huang Tingjian is #24). There were many such Chinese depictions. Another illustration is one from Japan perhaps based on an Italian (sic.) original (see commentary; there was also a set of Japanese counterparts").
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3. Alfreda Murck, op. cit., p. 158.
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4. Li Chongde 李崇德
I do not know the exact relationship between Li Chongde (Bio/xxx), a maternal aunt of Huang Tingjian, and the maternal uncle mentioned here, 李常 Li Chang (Bio/922; 1027 - 90).
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5. 琴書大全 Qinshu Daquan is included in QQJC, Vol. V
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6. Rui He Xian (瑞鶴仙, Hewen Zhuyin Qinpu, QQJC, XII/190)
This melody, set to ci lyrics of Huang Tingjian, is called Ruihe Xian because it uses the 詞 ci pattern of that name, in turn said to originated with a poem by Zhou Bangyan. The lyrics retell Ouyang Xiu's 醉翁亭記 Record of the Old Toper's Pavilion. As published with the qin melody, they are slightly different from the standard version generally attributed to Huang. Here is the standard version, with the Japanese tablature (譜) changes indicated.

環滁皆山也。望蔚然深秀，琅琊山也。
山行六七裏(譜﹕"里")，有翼然泉上，醉翁亭也。
翁之樂也。(譜﹕"樂也"作"意") 得之心、寓之酒也。
更野芳佳木，風高日出，景無窮也。

遊也。山肴野蔌，酒洌泉香，沸籌觥也 (譜作"沸觥籌也")。
太守醉也。喧嘩(譜﹕"諠譁")眾賓歡也。
況宴酣之樂、非絲非竹，太守樂其樂也。
問當時、太守為誰，醉翁是也。

Apparently there is also a version of this by Xu Li (see Rao, Section 7).
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7. A good discussion of its significance is in Alfreda Murck, op. cit., pp.163-177.
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