Shì Qíjǐ 釋齊己 (originally Hú Déshēng 胡得生, ca. 864 – ca. 937), of Chángshā in Húnán. Late-Táng / Five-Dynasties Buddhist monk-poet, the most prolific and stylistically classical of the late-Táng monastic poets and the contemporary peer of Guànxiū 貫休 釋貫休. Tonsured at Tóngqìngsì 同慶寺 of Wéiyángshān 溈陽山 (a center of the WéiYǎng Chán lineage in Húnán) in his early years; took the zì 衡岳沙門 (“monk of Héngyuè”). Spent his middle years in the Húnán / Jiāngxī region in correspondence with the secular poet Zhèng Gǔ 鄭谷 (his most important poetic-critical interlocutor — the yīzì shī “one-character teacher” anecdote about Qíjǐ’s Zǎoméi belongs to their exchange) and with the cluster of late-Táng poets that included Sīkōng Tú 司空圖 司空圖, Lù Guīméng 陸龜蒙, Pí Rìxiū 皮日休, and Pī Bīn 沈彬.
Late in life, after the disorder following the Táng’s collapse (907), he moved to Jīngnán (modern Jiānglíng, Húběi), where he was received as honored guest at the court of Gāo Jìxīng 高季興 (founder of the Nánpíng / Jīngnán kingdom, r. 924–928), who built him a jìngshì (pure cell) and supplied him with provisions. There he became a close friend of the Hànlín literary client Sūn Guāngxiàn 孫光憲, who edited the surviving 810 poems into the ten-juǎn KR4c0109 Báilián jí 白蓮集 after Qíjǐ’s death, with a preface dated Tiānfú 3 / 3 / 1 (= 938.04.04). Qíjǐ’s poetic style — clear in form, free of vulgar diction, bitter in thought, plain yet meaning-distant — sets the late-Táng monk-poet aesthetic in its classical key, distinct from the more startlingly unconventional manner of Guànxiū. His most celebrated single poem is the Zǎoméi 早梅 (“the village deep in snow / one branch opened last night”) — the canonical Chinese poetic zǎoméi and the locus of the yīzì shī anecdote.
CBDB has no entry for Qíjǐ. The conventional birth-death years 864–937 derive from the Zhōngguó Fójiào rénmíng dà cídiǎn and modern reference works; the actual dates are not recorded in pre-Sòng sources. He had no DILA Buddhist Authority id under examination at the time of writing.