Táng Gēng 唐庚 (1071–1121), zì Zǐxī 子西, posthumous and memorial styles Lǔguó xiānshēng 魯國先生 and Méishān xiānshēng 眉山先生. Native of Dānléng 丹稜 in Méizhōu 眉州 (modern Sìchuān) — the same county as Sū Shì 蘇軾, with whom he shares the Méishān sobriquet. He was popularly nicknamed Xiǎo Sū 小蘇 (“little Sū”) for his prose.
Jìnshì of Shàoshèng 1 (1094). His career was bound up with that of his patron Zhāng Shāngyīng 張商英 (1043–1121): from minor positions as Recorder in the Office of Punishments at Lìzhōu (利州) and Magistrate of Lángzhōng (閬中), he was brought to the capital as Erudite of the Imperial Clansmen’s School (Zōngxué bóshì 宗學博士), and on Zhāng’s elevation to chief minister in Dàguān 4 (1110) was promoted to Inspector of Equitable Levies for Jīngxī (Tíjǔ Jīngxī chángpíng 提舉京畿常平). Implicated in Zhāng’s fall through a celebratory rhapsody (Nèiqián xíng 內前行), he was demoted to internal exile in Huìzhōu 惠州 (Guǎngdōng) — the same destination as Sū Shì a generation before. Pardoned in Dàguān 5 (1111), he died on the journey home in 1121.
His chief writings are the KR2o0007 Sānguó záshì 三國雜事 in 2 juàn (composed in Huìzhōu exile, c. 1110), an early and influential statement of the ShǔHàn legitimacy position; and the Méishān jí 眉山集 / Tángzǐxī wénjí 唐子西文集 in 22 juàn — a substantial corpus of prose, rhapsodies, and verse that established him in the late Northern Sòng canon as the leading prose stylist of the second post-Sū generation. His Sòngshǐ biography is in j. 443 (Wényuàn 文苑 4). CBDB id 1598.