Tang Yin
(1470-1523) was a Chinese painter and writer in the Ming Dynasty. His courtesy name is Ziwei and Bohu, his nickname is Liuru Jushi, and he is the master of Taohua Nunnery. He claims to be the most talented scholar in the south of the Yangtze River (see: The Four Great Talents in the South of the Yangtze River). A native of Wuxian County (now Suzhou, Jiangsu Province). Born into a merchant family, his father Tang Guangde. Her mother, Qiu, studied hard when she was young. When she was young, she was admitted to the Imperial Household of Tianfu and later went to Beijing to take the imperial examination. She was implicated in a fraud case and was imprisoned. After she was released from prison, she went to the court of Ning Wang Zhu Chenhao. However, she found out that Zhu was plotting rebellion and escaped. Return to Suzhou. From then on, he abandoned his official career and devoted himself to calligraphy and painting. His behavior was indulgent and his temperament was wild and unruly. He is good at landscapes, figures, flowers and birds. He studied landscape painting with Zhou Chen in his early years. Later, he learned from Li Tang and Liu Songnian and made some changes. The mountains and ridges in his paintings are chopping with small axes. They are majestic and steep, with delicate brushwork and sparse layout. The style is elegant and handsome. The figure paintings are mostly of ladies and historical stories, following the tradition of the Tang Dynasty. They have clear and thin lines, bright and elegant colors, graceful postures and accurate shapes. They are also freehand figures with simple and comprehensive brushwork, which is full of interest. His flower and bird paintings are good at freehand ink painting, free and easy, and elegant in style. In addition to painting, Tang Yin also practiced calligraphy, adopting the method of Zhao Mengfu, and his calligraphy style is unique and handsome. There are "Riding a Donkey Thinking of Returning", "Mountain Road Sound of Pines", "Shi Ming", "Wang Shu Palace Prostitutes", "Li Duanduan's Settlement", "Autumn Wind Fan", "Withered Cha and Birds". Wait for the paintings to be handed down to the world.
Tang Yin was also accomplished in literature. His poems are mostly about travels, paintings, and sentiments. They can express wild and arrogant moods, as well as feelings about the harshness of the world. They use slang and colloquialisms in their poems, which are easy to understand and have simple meanings. He is the author of "The Collection of Liuru layman", and the Qing Dynasty compiled "The Complete Works of Liuru layman".
Mountain Poems
Up and up and up again,
Up to the high mountain.
With your head raised, the sun is red and the white clouds are low.
You can see all the seas and five lakes.
Inscribed on Bizaoxuan
The basic structure of the painting hall is painted on the boat.
The clear water ripples with green algae.
The sun shines on the building.
The smoke in the window is floating in the sky.
The curtains hang down and the flowers bloom.
The fish plays in the reflection of the railing.
A brief review of Qian’s poets.
It might as well be called the Crystal Palace.
Tang Yin's ancestral home is Jinchang, which is now the Jincheng area of ??Shanxi Province, so the four characters "Jinchang Tang Yin" are often written in his calligraphy and painting signatures. Shanxi people are very good at doing business. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the Tang family moved south and began to do business in Nanjing and Suzhou. Tang Yin was born into a merchant family in Wu Qili, Wu County, Suzhou Prefecture. Tang Bohu was talented and intelligent since he was a child. He was familiar with the Four Books and the Five Classics, and was well-read in historical books. At the age of 16, he won the first place in the scholar examination, which caused a sensation in the entire Suzhou city. At the age of 29, he went to Nanjing to take part in the provincial examination and won the first place. Just when he was full of ambitions, when he went to Beijing for the examination the next year, he suffered bad luck because he was involved in a fraud case in the examination room.
The general theory of "leaking the exam questions" is that Xu Jing, the son of a wealthy man in Jiangyin, who was traveling with him to take the exam, secretly bribed the examiner's family boy to get the exam questions in advance. The matter was revealed, and Tang Yin was also implicated and imprisoned. The examiners of the Beijing Examination that year were Cheng Minzheng and Li Dongyang. Both of them were well-educated people, and the test questions were so obscure that many candidates could not answer them. There were only two test papers among them, which not only answered the questions appropriately, but also were elegantly written. Cheng Minzheng was so happy that he blurted out: "These two papers must be from Tang Yin and Xu Jing." This sentence was heard and spread by everyone present. Tang Yin and Xu Jing visited Cheng Minzheng many times after arriving in the capital. Especially after he was appointed as the chief examiner, Tang Yin asked him to write a preface to a collection of his poems. This has created doubt in the minds of others. This time I heard Cheng Minzheng say this again in the examination room, which gave people who usually hated him a clue. A group of people started to report to the emperor one after another, saying that Cheng Minzheng had accepted bribes to leak the scandal, and if he was not investigated strictly, he would be disgraced by all the scholars in the world. Emperor Xiaozong believed it and was very angry. He immediately issued an order not to allow Cheng Minzheng to review the papers. All papers reviewed by Cheng Minzheng were reviewed by Li Dongyang. Cheng Minzheng, Tang Yin and Xu Jing were taken to Dali Temple Prison and sent to special personnel for trial. After Xu Jing was imprisoned, he could not withstand the torture and confessed that he used a piece of gold to bribe Cheng Minzheng's personal entourage and stole the test questions and leaked them to Tang Yin. After a joint trial by the Ministry of Punishment and the Ministry of Personnel, Xu Jing overturned his confession and said that it was a result of torture. The emperor issued an order to "rehabilitate" Cheng Minzheng. After being released from prison, Cheng Minzheng died of carbuncle due to resentment. After Tang Yin was released from prison, he was relegated to Zhejiang as a minor official. Tang Yin was ashamed not to take office.
There are many records and different opinions about the leak of the test questions. In fact this is the result of internal struggle within the ruling class. "History of the Ming Dynasty·Cheng Minzheng Biography" says: "It may be said that in Minzheng's prison, Fu Han wanted to seize his position and ordered Chang to report it. The secret cannot be revealed." But there is no doubt that this incident was extremely serious for Tang Yin of. From then on, Tang Yin decided not to pursue an official career. After returning home, he drank to drown his sorrows and traveled to famous mountains and rivers, determined to spend his whole life writing poetry, calligraphy and painting.
In the thirteenth year of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty (1500), Tang Yin left Suzhou and arrived in Zhenjiang by boat. From Zhenjiang to Yangzhou, he visited Slender West Lake, Pingshan Hall and other scenic spots. Then we took a boat along the Yangtze River through Wuhu and Jiujiang to Lushan. The majestic and spectacular scenery of Lushan Mountain left a deep impression on Tang Yin. It was fully reflected in his later paintings. He took a boat up the river to Huangzhou and saw the ruins of the Battle of Chibi. Tang Yin's "Red Cliff Picture" was painted based on this. Then he traveled south to Hunan, climbed Yueyang Tower, and visited Dongting Lake.
Then go south and climb Nanyue Hengshan Mountain. Then enter Fujian and roam around the famous mountains in Wuyi and Jiuli Lake in Xianyou County. Tang Yin transferred from Fujian to Zhejiang, visited Yandang Mountain and Tiantai Mountain, crossed the sea to Putuo, then went up the Fuchun River and Xin'an River, arrived in Anhui, and went up to Huangshan and Jiuhua Mountains. At this time, Tang Yin's pocket was exhausted and he had to return to Suzhou. Tang Yin's grand journey of thousands of miles lasted for more than nine months and visited famous mountains and rivers, which added a lot of material for his later paintings.
When he returned to Suzhou, his family was very poor and his wife made a lot of noise and finally left him. He lived in a small building facing the street at the entrance of Wuchifang Lane, where he entertained himself with paintings and made a living by selling literary paintings. He wrote in a poem: "If you don't refine elixirs, you won't meditate. If you don't work for merchants, you won't plow the fields. When you have time, you can write pictures and sell them. You don't make money by making sins in the world." This shows that he is indifferent to fame and fortune and specializes in free reading and selling paintings. Career aspirations.
When Tang Yin was thirty-six years old, he chose Taohuawu in the north of the city and built an elegant and leisurely home to live a pure and wild life. Taohuawu was originally the villa of Zhangzhuang Jian of the Song Dynasty, but after the vicissitudes of life, it had long since become a ruin. However, the scenery here is pleasant and the environment is very quiet. A clear stream meanders by, a few wild peach and willow trees beside the stream, and a hill of soil, which makes it feel like a mountain. The next year, Tang Yin used the money from selling paintings to build Taohuawu Villa. Although there are only a few thatched huts, there are elegant plaques hanging under the eaves with the names of the rooms such as "Xueputang", "Mengmo Pavilion" and "Xiaodiezhai". Tang Yin loved peach blossoms all his life. He named his villa "Peach Blossom Temple" and called himself "The Master of Peach Blossom Temple". He also wrote "Song of Peach Blossom Temple": "The Peach Blossom Immortal planted peach trees and folded flower branches for wine money. When he was sober, he would only sit in front of the flowers. When he was drunk, he would sit in front of the flowers. You have to sleep under the flowers. Day after day before and after the flowers, you wake up drunk year after year..." In spring, the flowers in the garden were blooming. He invited Shen Zhou, Zhu Yunming, Wen Zhengming and others to come here to drink, write poems and paint. , and parted happily. . "Drinking from it every day, you will drink it when guests come, and don't ask when they go. If you are drunk, you will fall asleep." (Zhu Yunming's Epitaph of Tang Ziwei) At this time, Tang Yin lived a leisurely and detached life.
In the ninth year of Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty (1514), he was recruited to Nanchang by King Ning of the Ming Dynasty with a large sum of money. Later, he found out that he was involved in King Ning's political conspiracy, so he pretended to be crazy and escaped and returned to his hometown. Later, King Ning launched an army. The rebel court was put down, and Tang Yin fortunately escaped the murderous disaster, but it also caused a lot of trouble. From then on, his thoughts gradually became depressed, and he turned to Buddhism and called himself "Liu Ru layman". "Liu Ru" was taken from the Diamond Sutra: "All potential dharmas are like bubbles in a dream, like dew or lightning, and should be viewed as such." The seal of the autonomous party is "Fleeing Zen Immortal Official".
After returning home from Nanchang, he was sick all year round and could not paint often. In addition, he did not know how to run a household, so his life was difficult. He often even relied on borrowing money from his friends Zhu Zhishan and Wen Zhengming to survive. During this period, the famous calligrapher Wang Chong often came to help him and married Tang Yin's only daughter as his daughter-in-law, which became the happiest thing in Tang Yin's later years.
In the second year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (1523), at the age of 54, his health condition became even worse. In the autumn of this year, he went to Wang's house in Dongshan at the invitation of a friend. But seeing that there were two sentences in Su Dongpo's original works: "Half a hundred years of strength, there will be no more suffering in the future", which just touched Tang Yin's state of mind. He felt sad, said goodbye and went home, and became bedridden from then on, which soon ended his miserable life. After his death, he was buried in Taohuawu North. In the 26th year of Jiajing's reign, the burial was moved to Wangjia Village, Hengtang Town. After his death, his relatives and friends Wang Chong, Zhu Yunming, Wen Zhengming and others pooled money to arrange the funeral arrangements. Zhu Yunming wrote an epitaph of more than a thousand words, which was handwritten by Wang Chong and engraved on the stone tablet. Most of the life stories about Tang Yin in later generations can be obtained from this epitaph.
Tang Yin had a bumpy official career and a miserable life in his later years, so that his poems were almost scattered after his death. During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, He Junli, a bookseller in Changshu, admired Tang Bohu's poetry and personality. He spent a lot of money to collect pieces of paper and words to collect and organize poems and chapters for him. After reviewing and publishing nearly a hundred poems and essays written by Tang Yin during his lifetime, Tang Yin had the first relatively complete collection of poems and essays handed down to the world, and the paper was expensive in Luoyang for a while. Later, he became a famous publishing bibliophile in Jiangnan.
Mao Jin, a bookseller in Changshu, also respected Tang Yin's talents and personality very much. When he compiled "Chronicles of Ming Poems" and "Haiyu Ancient and Modern Literature Garden", he specially included Tang Yin's poems and anecdotes during his lifetime in detail, which enriched and improved the content of Tang Bohu's poems. Accumulating life for future generations