Late-Táng official and author, zì Chūzhōng 初中, jí and family background not recorded with precision. Active 860s–880s; the Wáng Dìngbǎo Táng zhāi yán 王定保唐摭言 says of him that he “moved in and out of the examination rolls for over thirty years”, placing his career in the late Yìzōng and Xīzōng reigns. He passed the jìnshì under Cuī Háng 崔沆 (whose grading of him is dated by the Tāng zhāi yán to the 870s). His own preface to the Běnshì shī KR4i0005 is dated Guāngqǐ 2 / 886, written at Bāozhōng 褒中 while in the entourage of the Xīzōng court’s flight to Xīngyuán 興元 during the great rebellion. In the Hán Hóng 韓翃 entry of his Běnshì shī he says: “in the Kāichéng era (836–840) I was relieved from Wúzhōu 梧州”, but his rank at Wúzhōu is unrecorded.
The Xīn Tángshū Yìwénzhì writes his name as Mèng Qǐ 孟啟, and Máo Jìn’s 毛晉 Jīndài mìshū edition follows that reading; but virtually all other citation traditions write 棨 (the jǐ-radical halberd-symbol character), and the Sìkù editors regard 啟 as a Táng-history scribal error. Only one work is attributed to him: the Běnshì shī 本事詩 KR4i0005, a single-juǎn anthology of anecdotes giving the personal-historical background to seventy-odd poems, organized into seven thematic categories (qíng gǎn 情感, shì gǎn 事感, gāo yì 高逸, yuàn fèn 怨憤, zhēng yì 徵異, zhēng jiù 徵咎, cháo xì 嘲戲). Wǔdài Chǔchángzǐ 處常子 produced a sequel in two juǎn on the same plan, now lost. CBDB id 93962 holds him without further data.