You Mao

Life

In the eighteenth year of Emperor Gaozong’s Shaoxing reign (1148), he earned the jinshi degree. He placed thirty-seventh in the third class. In the thirty-first year of Shaoxing he became magistrate of Taixing; during the Longxing era he served as professor of Jiangyin Military Prefecture and waited seven years for a new appointment.

In the fifth year of Qiandao (1169), he was appointed Assistant Director of the Directorate of Palace Construction; in the seventh year he became a Secretary in the Palace Library and concurrently a collator in the Academy for the Veritable Records, later serving as a compiler in the National History Academy and as Literary Prose Officer.

During the second year of Chunxi (1175), he became prefect of Taizhou and served there through 1177; in the fifth year he was appointed Salt and Grain Commissioner for the Huainan East Circuit and later transferred to the Jiangnan East Circuit. In the eighth year he became Transport Commissioner of the Jiangnan West Circuit, and was later promoted to Transport Commissioner while concurrently serving as prefect of Longxing Prefecture; in the tenth year he was summoned as Vice Director of the Ministry of Personnel and Lecturer to the Heir Apparent, and in the fourteenth year he became Left Admonisher to the Heir Apparent and was appointed Junior Remonstrant of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices.

He was outspoken at court and did not bend the law; he was later dismissed after remonstrating against Jiang Teli. A separate account links his removal to his being regarded as part of Zhou Bida’s faction when Emperor Guangzong came to the throne, after which he was placed in a retirement sinecure.

In 1190 he was recalled as prefect of Wuzhou, transferred to Taiping Prefecture, and also held the office of prefect of Nanping Army. He was summoned as a Giving Commissioner and concurrently served as a Lecturer; in the fourth year of Shaoxi he was appointed Minister of Rites and concurrently Reader-in-Waiting, but later sought retirement because of illness. His other recorded offices included the prefecture of Hongzhou, Qiduwei, Chengyi Lang, Zhengyi Dafu, and Zhimi Ge. In the fifth year of Shaoxi (1194), he died at the age of sixty-eight and received the posthumous name Wenjian.

Family and associations

His father was 尤時亨, his mother was 耿氏, and his wife was 唐氏; his sons were 尤棐 and 尤槩, his grandsons included 尤焴 and 尤煓, and his great-grandson was 尤冰寮. His friends included Zhu Xi, Lu You, Zhou Bida, and Yang Wanli.

He was ranked with Yang Wanli, Fan Chengda, and Lu You as one of the Four Great Masters of the Southern Song.

Literary work and books

You Mao was accomplished in poetry and prose. Inspired by Sun Chuo’s Fu on “Suichu,” he built Suichu Hall at the foot of Jiulong Mountain and assembled a library of more than 30,000 juan.

His Catalogue of the Suichu Hall, in one juan, was one of the earliest Chinese works of bibliographic cataloguing by edition. His Suichu Xiaogao is given as sixty juan, with an alternative title, Liangxi Ji, in fifty juan; his Inner and Outer Proclamations comprised thirty juan, and both works are lost.

During the Kangxi era, You Tong compiled and printed the Liangxi Yigao; during the Republican period, You Tong continued the publication with the Liangxi Yigao: Supplement to the Poetry Manuscript. The Liangxi Yigao is variously described as one or two juan, while You Mao’s poems are now collected in one juan.