Tu Long

Life

The Tu family had long lived at Taohua Ferry. The names of Tu Long’s great-grandfather and grandfather vary: one account gives 屠子良 and 屠璞, while another gives 屠子雲 and 屠檏; both accounts name his father 屠濬. His father supported the family through fishing and commerce, and Tu Long was the youngest of six sons.

As a boy, Tu Long was known for quick intelligence and could compose several thousand words at a sitting; he was also recognized by Zhang Shiche, Tu Dashan, and Fan Qin. At the age of twenty he opened a school in Kaihua, and in 1573 he wrote the rhapsody *Minghai Bo Tian Fu*, which Liu Xuan praised.

In 1576 he passed the Zhejiang provincial examination as a juren; in 1577 he passed the jinshi examination, placing 110th in the third rank.

He was appointed magistrate of Yingshang and transferred to Qingpu. At Yingshang he repaired the eastern gate embankment to control flooding, and at Qingpu he worked diligently enough that hundreds of local people escorted him to Taicang when he left. While in office he visited Jiufeng and Sanmiao without neglecting administrative duties, built a shrine to the Lu brothers, and received such figures of the Wu-Yue region as Shen Jiajie and Feng Kaizhi. When a commissioner asked about the prolonged rain, Tu Long described the flooding beyond the immediate outskirts rather than concealing the people’s distress behind the safety of fields near the city, winning the commissioner’s admiration.

In 1582 he went to the capital for the daji performance review; the following year he entered the Ministry of Rites, serving in the Office of Ceremonial and the Office of Guest Affairs and rising to langzhong. His ministry is variously given as the Ministry of Rites and the Ministry of Personnel. In the tenth month of 1584, after a banquet excursion with the Xining Marquis Song Shien, he was impeached by the Ministry of Justice secretary Yu Xianqing; both men were dismissed, Yu for false accusation and Tu for excessive indulgence in poetry and wine. Tu Long’s refusal to accept Xu Jie’s overtures while he was in Qingpu brought him Xu Jie’s enmity and ended his official career; after returning home, he lived on poetry, wine, and the sale of his writing.

After his dismissal, at Wang Daokun’s invitation he went to Xin’an and joined the Baiyu Society, and later took part in the Nanping Poetry Society in Hangzhou. He was close to Tang Xianzu; in 1595 he visited Tang at Suichang in both spring and autumn, discussing literary art and touring the mountains. Once out of office he travelled through Wu-Yue, went up the Xu River, climbed Mount Wuyi, and explored Fujian. At the Mid-Autumn Festival in a gui-mao year, he served as presider at a gathering of more than seventy poets at Linxiao Terrace on Wushi Mountain, where he also performed *Yuyang Cao*.

In his later years his household grew increasingly poor; he supported himself by writing, once composed a song to ask Li Shuxuan for rice, and soon fell ill and died at the age of sixty-three. A group of unpublished poems and prose, entitled *Jiangxuelou ji*, was said to comprise several dozen volumes kept in the family home.

Drama and writing

Tu Long excelled in drama and was regarded as a major Ming playwright; he also wrote ci poetry, whose diction was rich in ornament but less controlled in structure. In 1596 he composed the three chuanqi plays *Tanhua ji*, *Caihao ji*, and *Xiuwen ji*, and he also wrote the drama collection *Fengyige Yuefu* as well as *Yishi zhuan* and *Mingliaozi*.

His collections included *Youquan ji*, *Baiyu ji*, *Qizhenguan ji*, *Cai zhen ji*, *Nanyou ji*, and *Hongbao ji*. Other works attributed to him include *文具雅編*, *遊具雅編*, *考槃餘事*, *茶箋*, *金魚品*, *香箋*, *起居器服箋*, *箋譜銘*, *紙墨筆硯箋*, *書箋*, *帖箋*, *畫箋*, *琴箋*, *盆玩品*, *山齋清供箋*, *清言*, *娑羅館清話*, *續清言*, and *冥寥子遊*. In his own account he described his work as “quick in talent but loose in conception,” held that Du Fu possessed an elevated mastery that could not be reduced to rustic simplicity, and was praised by Shen Jiajie for seven-character ancient verse that stood “unrivalled in the realm.”