Wáng Bó 王勃 (650–676)
Zì Zǐān 子安. Native of Jiàngzhōu 絳州 Lóngmén 龍門 (modern Héjīn 河津, Shānxī), grandson of the Suí Confucian classicist Wáng Tōng 王通 (Wénzhōng zǐ 文中子) and great-nephew of the early-Táng poet Wáng Jì 王績. Eldest of the Sì jié 四傑 (“Four Outstanding Ones”) of early-Táng letters, alongside Yáng Jiǒng 楊炯 楊炯, Lú Zhàolín 盧照鄰 盧照鄰, and Luò Bīnwáng 駱賓王 駱賓王.
A child prodigy: he passed the jiēxiào liánfāng 揭孝廉方 examination at fourteen suì (665) and was cháosàn láng 朝散郎 at sixteen. Recommended to the Pèiwáng 沛王 (the future Emperor Zhōngzōng) as xiūzhuàn 修撰; lost the post in 668 over a satirical Xí Yīngwáng jī 檄英王雞 (“Proclamation Against the King Yīng’s Cock”) composed in fun for the cock-fighting Pèiwáng court — Gāozōng read it as inciting fraternal rivalry and dismissed Wáng. After a Sìchuān 四川 sojourn he was made Guócāng cānjūn 虢倉參軍 in Guózhōu 虢州, where he was dismissed and very nearly executed for harboring and then killing a runaway government slave in 674. Pardoned in the general amnesty of Shàngyuán 1 (674), he set out the next year to visit his exiled father (whose magistracy at Yōngzhōu 雍州 had been forfeit on his account) in Jiāozhǐ 交趾 (modern North Vietnam). En route, in Shàngyuán 2 (675), he composed the Téngwánggé xù 滕王閣序 at a zhòngyáng festival banquet at Hóngzhōu 洪州 (modern Nánchāng 南昌). He drowned in the South China Sea early the following year (676), aged 26 suì.
His extant corpus is preserved as the Wáng Zǐān jí KR4c0003, a 16-juǎn re-compilation by Zhāng Xiè 張燮 in the late Míng. Late-19th-century discoveries of MS witnesses in Japan (the Shōsō-in and Tōchōji manuscripts) added several dozen previously unattested pieces; these are integrated into Hé Líntiān’s modern critical edition. CBDB confirms 650–676 (cbdbId 30982); the catalog meta’s 648–675 is one year displaced and not followed in modern scholarship.