Chapter 16 Wang Ji

Wang Ji (585-644), courtesy name Wugong, was born in Longmen, Jiangzhou (now Hejin, Shanxi).He lived during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, which was very similar to Tao Yuanming's life during the Jin and Song Dynasties, so he especially liked Tao Yuanming.Tao Yuanming called himself "Mr. Wuliu" because there were five willow trees beside his house, and wrote "Biography of Mr. Wuliu". About wine, there are 20 poems such as "Drinking Poems" and "Stopping Wine" and "Speaking of Wine". Wang Ji is also addicted to alcohol. Wrote a "Wine Classic" which studies wine-making methods, and a "Wine Book" which collects biographies of famous wine-making figures in the past, but unfortunately they have been lost.Tao Yuanming was appointed as the magistrate of Pengze County. "The public land has ordered the planting of sorghum grains (that is, sorghum, which can be used for wine making), saying: 'It is enough for me to be drunk with wine." , a kind of rice), so that one hectare of 50 mu is planted with sorghum, and 50 mu is planted with sorghum" ("Book of Jin·Tao Qian Biography").After Wang Ji returned to seclusion, he also took care of several people to grow millet for wine making.He said: "Floating life knows how many days, and there is no shape to chase after the name. It is better to make more wine and pour it out to the bamboo forest." Tao Yuanming wrote "Self-Sacrifice Essay", Wang Ji also wrote his own epitaph... To put it bluntly, they are all "only under the high position" (Wang Ji's "Self-written Epitaph") caused complaints.

Wang Ji was the younger brother of Wang Tong, a great Confucian in the Sui Dynasty, and the uncle of Wang Bo, a famous poet.At the end of the Sui Dynasty, he traveled to the capital at the age of fifteen and became famous as a "fairy boy".At that time, the world was in chaos and it was dangerous to be an official, so he chose to go back to his hometown Donggao Village, calling himself Donggaozi, and spent his days drinking, playing the piano, planting flowers and raising birds.He was conscripted at the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, but in the end he abandoned his official position and went back to Donggao Village to drink his wine and write his poems.

His poems are indeed well written, especially in the late Sui and early Tang Dynasties, not only the artistic conception is sparse, but also his five-character poems are already relatively standardized metrical poems.For example, his most famous "Ambition":