He was born in 1007, grew up fatherless, and died in 1072. As a child, he lived with his mother and sister in dire poverty. Lacking money to buy brushes, his mother taught him to write by stroking characters in the sand with reed stems. The books he read were borrowed from neighbors. One day he was playing at a friend's house when he noticed a stack of old books in the corner. Six of them were collections by the Tang dynasty's Han Yu, which he happily brought home to read. Though just ten years old, Ouyang Xiu immediately understood the greatness of Han Yu's work. Those tattered volumes are what set Ouyang on the path toward establishing a literary movement.
The tippler's heart is not in the cup
When he was 24 Ouyang passed the jinshi civil service exams and was posted in Luoyang, where the time he spent boozing and writing verse with friends led his superior to write, "His associates are startlingly numerous and varied." Just when things were going so well for Ouyang, his wife died within a year and a half of his marriage. When his second wife also died shortly after marriage, he was grief-stricken. At 29 he was demoted and sent off to a post in the hinterlands. There he sired eight boys and three girls with his third wife, cleaned up his living habits, and started to concentrate on his scholarship.
The guwen (classical literature) movement that Ouyang founded advocated the writing of accessible essays on difficult issues. It thrived for 1,000 years until the baihua (vernacular) movement ended it. Ouyang wrote "Essay on Factions" as a letter to the emperor in defense of the minister Fan Chungyan. He believed that factions had existed since ancient times, but that it was necessary for rulers to distinguish between the righteous and the small-minded. When seeking friends, the righteous sought common values, whereas the small-minded sought common profit. The ability to take profit, Ouyang wrote, would change. Hence, the small-minded were false friends. His "Record of the Old Tippler's Pavilion" is clear and easy to read. In it, he wrote the famous line, "The old tippler's heart is not in the cup, but in the landscape." Thus he drinks not to get drunk but rather to give expression to nature and so transcend the fleeting ups and downs of politics and the world of men.
Resident Knight of the Six Ones
In the Northern Song dynasty scholarship was closely connected to scholars' experiences in the world-hence Wang Yangming's advice "to extend knowledge by studying the nature of things." There were numerous works that made detailed studies of nature, such as Cai Xiang's calligraphy "Lychee" or Ouyang's essay "Luoyang Peony Study." Ouyang, moreover, was the first to research ancient bronze and stone inscriptions, coins and other artifacts in an effort to gain a better understanding of his culture's past.
In his later days, Ouyang lived in Laizhou, where he called himself "Resident Knight of the Six Ones." The "Six Ones" referred to his one ten-thousand books, his one thousand rubbings from bronze and stone objects dating back to the Three Dynasties, his one qin (Chinese zither), one chess set, one wine flask, and one old geezer (i.e. himself). Whether as a tippler or an old geezer, Ouyang Xiu was a great leader-both in government and in the realm of art and culture.
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Ouyang Xiu was more than a leading literary light of the Northern Song dynasty. Studying old bronze and stone engravings to learn more about ancient Chinese history and culture, he was also the founder of Chinese epigraphy. (courtesy of the National Palace Museum)
Ouyang Xiu was more than a leading literary light of the Northern Song dynasty. Studying old bronze and stone engravings to learn more about ancient Chinese history and culture, he was also the founder of Chinese epigraphy. （courtesy of the National Palace Museum）
