Late Southern-Sòng cí-master (fl. c. 1220–1260; conventional life-dates ca. 1200/12 – ca. 1260/72), zì Jūntè 君特, hào Mèngchuāng 夢窗 (“Dream-Window”), of Qìngyuán 慶元 (Níngbō, Zhèjiāng). One of the two supreme prosodic-school cí-writers of the late Southern Sòng (with Jiāng Kuí 姜夔) and the chief inheritor of Zhōu Bāngyàn 周邦彥’s gélǜ 格律 line. Never held official rank; survived as a long-term retainer / mùbīn 幕賓 in the households of the Wúshì of Sūzhōu and the Shǐshì of Sìmíng; in his late years patronized by Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道. His Mèngchuāng gǎo KR4j0048 preserves around 340 cí — originally divided into four jiǎyǐbǐngdīng 甲乙丙丁 sub-collections (probably not his own arrangement; later compilers used the ten heavenly stems as labels without intending chronological order). The juébǐ (last brush-stroke) Yīng tí xù 鶯啼序 is at 240 characters one of the longest single cí in the corpus. Critical reception is split (the Sìkù tíyào preserves the canonical dichotomy): Shěn Yìfù 沈義父’s Yuèfǔ zhǐmí praises him as “deeply attaining the marvellousness of Qīngzhēn”; Zhāng Yán 張炎’s Cí yuán charges his cí are “like a seven-jewelled tower dazzling the eye, but broken-down does not make a coherent fragment.” Modern criticism (Lin Shuen-fu, 1978) places Wú as the Lǐ Shāngyǐn 李商隱 of the cí form. Standard editions: Yáng Tiěfū 楊鐵夫, Wú Mèngchuāng cí jiān shì (Guǎngdōng rénmín, 1989); Xià Chéngtāo 夏承燾, Wú Mèngchuāng xìnián (in Táng Sòng círén niánpǔ).