Chái Wàng 柴望 (1212–1280), zì Zhòng Shān 仲山, hào Qiūtáng 秋堂, was a Sòng jìnshì and loyalist poet from Jiāngshān 江山 county in Qúzhōu 衢州 (modern Zhèjiāng). With his three brothers — Chái Suì 柴隨, Chái Yuánhéng 柴元亨, and Chái Yuánbīn 柴元彬 — he was known collectively as the “Four Recluses of the Chái Clan” (Cháishì sìyǐn 柴氏四隱), each of the brothers having gained a local reputation as a yǐnjūnzǐ 隱君子. Chái Wàng was the eldest and best-known.
His public notoriety was made by the Bǐngdīng guījiàn 丙丁龜鑑 of Chúnyòu 6 (1246), a memorial-treatise submitted to Lǐzōng 理宗 in response to an imperial yīngzhào call. Drawing on chènwěi 讖緯 prognostication and the gānzhī yearly cycles, Chái argued from historical precedent that the bǐngdīng coordinates were inauspicious for the Sòng house and predicted dynastic catastrophe; this earned him an imprisonment and, on his release, a celebrated hero’s farewell from the shìdàfū at the Yǒngjīn Gate 湧金門 of Hángzhōu. Wáng Yīnglín 王應麟 quoted from Chái’s memorial in the Kùnxué jìwén 困學紀聞 as a jiāhuà 佳話 (“fine episode”). The Sìkù quánshū editors took a sterner view, including the Bǐngdīng guījiàn only in a corrective notice.
After the fall of Línān in 1276 Chái withdrew into deep retirement in the mountains south of Jiāngshān and refused to serve the Yuán. He died in Yuán Zhìyuán 17 (1280) at the age of 68. His larger poetic output — the Dàozhōu Táiyī jí 道州台衣集, the Yǒngshǐ shī 詠史詩, and the Xīliáng gǔchuī 西涼鼓吹 — was already lost by the Qīng; what survives, gathered into two juàn of the Qiūtáng jí 秋堂集 KR4d0386 by later hands, is a fragmentary witness to a once-substantial late-Sòng loyalist voice. The Sìkù editors place him in the company of Xiè Áo 謝翺 as a major exponent of the shǔlí màixiù theme of dynastic mourning.