Founding emperor of the Southern Sòng (r. 1127–1162) and the dynasty’s most accomplished imperial calligrapher. Ninth son of Huīzōng 徽宗; sole male of the imperial line to escape the Jin capture of Kāifēng in 1126–27; established the Lín’ān 臨安 court and reigned for thirty-six years before abdicating in favour of his adopted heir Xiàozōng 孝宗. After abdication he lived at the Déshòu 德壽 palace until 1187. Personally trained in calligraphy from boyhood, he first followed Huáng Tíngjiān, then Mǐ Fú, finally settling on the canonical WèiJìn style of the two Wángs (Wáng Xīzhī, Wáng Xiànzhī). His KR3h0013 Sīlíng hànmò zhì (one juàn, Déshòu period) is the principal imperial treatise on calligraphy in pre-Yuán China. His court calligraphic programme — copying of the Chunhua and other model-letter compendia, calligraphic supervision of Mǎ Hézhī’s Máoshī illustrations, restoration of the WèiJìn canon — is treated at length in McNair (1995) and Murray (1993). Posthumous designation 高宗; tomb-name Sīlíng 思陵.