Wéi Zhuāng 韋莊 (zì Duānjǐ 端己; 836?–910), of Dùlíng 杜陵 (Chángān suburb). One of the most important late-Táng / Former-Shǔ poets and the founding cí-poet of the Huājiān 花間 tradition. CBDB id 92161 (836?–910). His career took shape in displacement — the Huáng Cháo rebellion of 880 destroyed his early manuscripts and forced him into more than a decade of wandering through Hénán, Jiāngnán, WúYuè, and Húnán. He passed the jìnshì in Qiánníng 1 (894) at age 58, an exceptionally late success; was appointed Hànlín xuéshì, then Bǔquè. From 900 he answered the summons of Wáng Jiàn 王建 at Chéngdū and rose under the new Former-Shǔ state to Lìbù shìláng tóng zhōngshū ménxià píngzhāngshì (chancellor) — a principal architect of Former-Shǔ political institutions. He died at Chéngdū in 910.
His most famous single work is the Qínfù yín 秦婦吟 (“Lament of the Qín-Lady”), a ca. 5000-character ballad narrating Chángān’s sack by Huáng Cháo from the perspective of a refugee woman — the longest extant Táng poem. Wéi himself ordered it suppressed (presumably because of its political incaution); it disappeared from all printed editions of his works and survived only in Dūnhuáng manuscripts (P.3381 etc.) recovered after 1900. His regular-verse and juéjù are preserved in KR4c0111 Huànhuā jí (compiled 903 by his younger brother Wéi Ǎi 韋藹 韋藹); his cí are preserved in the Huājiān jí compiled ca. 940.
The collection’s title — Washing-Flowers Collection — derives from Wéi’s recovery in 901 of the abandoned site of Dù Fǔ’s Cǎotáng on the Huànhuā xī west of Chéngdū, where he restored a single thatch chamber to honor the great mid-Táng poet. His own poetic style — limpid lyrical clarity, exile-and-displacement themes, the painfully precise compressed Liùcháo dynastic-image (Táichéng: “六朝如夢鳥空啼”) — distinguishes him from both the more political Luó Yǐn 羅隱 羅隱 and the more imagistic monk-poets Qíjǐ 釋齊己 釋齊己 and Guànxiū 釋貫休 釋貫休 of the same generation.
The Yates 1988 Washing Silk monograph is the standard Western-language biography and selective translation. Robin Yates uses 834 as birth year; CBDB / Tángrénwù zhī-shi bēisù give 836; the difference is minor and turns on the interpretation of one biographical detail.