Sūn Qiáo 孫樵 (fl. 855, zì Kězhī 可之, also Yǐnzhī 隱之), self-described as a Guāndōng rén (man of east-of-the-pass) — exact prefecture unrecorded. Jìnshì of Dàzhōng 9 (855); appointed Zhōngshū shèrén. When Xīzōng fled to QíLǒng during the Huáng Cháo rebellion (881), Sūn was summoned to the imperial residence-in-exile and promoted to Zhífāng lángzhōng, Shàngzhùguó, and granted the zǐjīn yúdài (purple-and-gold fish-bag).
Sūn is, with Liú Tuì 劉蛻 and Fán Zōngshī 樊宗師, the canonical late-Táng practitioner of the xiǎnjué gǔwén (precipice-jutting archaic-prose) school. His own self-genealogy traces his prose-method to Hán Yù via Huángfǔ Shí 皇甫湜 and Lái Wúzé 來無擇 — one of the rare surviving examples of a self-consciously codified Táng gǔwén lineage. Sū Shì later coined the pithy formulation: “those who learn Hán Yù and fail are Huángfǔ Shí; those who learn Shí and fail are Sūn Qiáo” — describing the school’s downward trend toward forced obscurity.
Principal work in the corpus: Sūn Kězhī jí KR4c0083 in 10 juǎn (Sòng catalogues record only 3 juǎn / 35 pieces; the 10-juǎn form is from a Wáng Áo nèigé manuscript via Máo Jìn). CBDB id 92793 has no dates.