Yán Zhītuī 顏之推 (531–c. 591–595), zì Jiè 介, of Lángyé Línyí 琅邪臨沂 (the family had relocated southward to the Liáng capital generations before), was the leading scholar-official of his generation to have served, in succession, four dynasties — Liáng 梁, Northern Qí 北齊, Northern Zhōu 北周, and Sui 隋 — across the catastrophic Six-Dynasties / unification transition. He is the author of the Yánshì jiāxùn 顏氏家訓 (KR3j0014), the founding monument of the Chinese jiāxùn (family-instructions) genre, and of the autobiographical Guān wǒ shēng fù 觀我生賦 (“Reflecting on My Life”) preserved in his biography in Bei-Qí shū 北齊書 45. His standard biography is Bei-Qí shū 45 (which Wilkinson §73.4 cites for Yán’s notes naming the four bibliographic divisions jīng / shǐ / zǐ / jí a generation before the Suí zhì’s formalization). CBDB id 32426 records his name with a placeholder year-zero entry; the standard 531 birth date and the death-year window of 591–595 are taken from his own datable references in the Yánshì jiāxùn and from Albert Dien’s reconstruction.
His career: born in 531 at Jiànkāng 建康 (the Liáng capital) — one of nine children, of whom three brothers survived; lost his father at age nine and was raised by his elder brother Yán Zhīyí 顏之儀; entered Liáng court service in the late 540s under the Crown Prince and the Liáng Emperor Yuán 元帝 (Xiāo Yì 蕭繹 — see KR3j0012) at Jiānglíng 江陵, working on the four-branches palace library; carried captive to Cháng’ān when Western Wèi sacked Jiānglíng in 555; escaped to Northern Qí and rose at the Yè 鄴 court to huángmén shìláng 黄門侍郎 (Yellow-Gate Attendant), the office under which the Sìkù catalogue still records him; survived the Northern Qí collapse to Northern Zhōu in 577; took service under the Suí at the unification (581), where Lù Fǎyán 陸法言’s Qièyùn 切韻 preface (transmitted in the form completed in Rénshòu, 601) names him among the eight founding scholars of the great phonological-rhyme conference. He was probably already dead by 601: the standard convention places his death in the early-to-mid 590s.
He named his three sons after the territories his life had spanned: Yán SīLǔ 顏思魯 (“Remembering Lǔ” — his ancestral place), Yán MǐnChǔ 顏愍楚 (“Sorry for Chǔ” — i.e. for the Liáng territory in which he had served), and Yán YóuQín 顏遊秦 (“Sojourning in Qín” — i.e. his captivity at Cháng’ān) — Wilkinson §6.7.2 cites this as the locus classicus of the practice. The Yán family went on to produce some of the great Táng cultural figures: his great-grandson Yán Shīgǔ 顏師古 (581–645), the principal Táng commentator on the Hàn shū and editor of the Wǔ jīng dìngběn 五經定本; and the calligrapher Yán Zhēnqīng 顏真卿 (709–785), whose hand established the Táng standard. Wilkinson §3.5.4 notes the standardization of Chinese characters as “a family concern of the Yans’.”