Zhāng Xiàoxiáng 張孝祥 (1132–1170)
Zì Ānguó 安國; hào Yúhú jūshì 于湖居士 (“Sojourner of Yúhú [Lake]”) — after his late-life sinecure-residence at Wúhú 蕪湖 on the Yangtze (modern Ānhuī). Native of Hézhōu Wūjiāng 和州烏江 (modern Mǎānshān, Ānhuī). Lifedates 1132–1170, CBDB id 3144.
Zhuàngyuán (placed first) of the jìnshì of Shàoxīng 24 (1154) at age 22 — in the same examination Qín Xī 秦熺 (Qín Huì’s son) also sat; the imperial commissioner overrode Qín Huì’s 秦檜 pressure and placed Zhāng Xiàoxiáng first, making the contest one of the most politically charged of the era. Zhāng entered office as the immediate target of Qín Huì’s hostility; Qín’s death (1155) preempted the persecution. Under Xiàozōng he served as Zhī Jiànkāngfǔ during the Lóngxīng (1163–1164) campaign as the protégé of the war chief Zhāng Jùn 張浚. The patron Zhāng Jùn’s catastrophic defeat at Fúlí (1163) brought Zhāng Xiàoxiáng down with the war camp; he ended his career as Zhī Jīngzhōu and on a sinecure-temple appointment at Wúhú, where he died at 38.
His enduring fame rests on his cí (lyric) poetry of the háofàng (heroic-romantic) tradition. The Liùzhōu gētóu “Chánghuái wàng dào” — lament on the loss of the North after Fúlí — and the Niànnú jiāo “Guò Dòngtíng” — composed on his 1166 retirement journey from Guǎngxī across Dòngtíng Lake on a moonlit autumn night — are the canonical anthology pieces of Southern-Sòng heroic-romantic cí. Xiè Yáorén’s preface to his collection (1201) established the Zhāng–Sū Shì comparison as the principal axis of SòngYuán reception, with Zhāng cast as a tiāncái (innate-genius) successor to Sū Dōngpō.
Surviving in Kanripo:
- KR4d0216 Yúhú jūshì wénjí (40 juǎn, SBCK).
Biography: Sòng shǐ j. 389.