Liu Yizhi

Life

He earned the jinshi degree in the third year of the Xuanhe era (1121), first supervising the Xiuzhou wine bureau and then serving as a professor at Yuezhou. In the fourth year of Jianyan (1130), he became an editor in the Office for the Deliberation of a Single Set of Edicts. After the beginning of the Shaoxing era, he was summoned for a library appointment and made a Palace Library collator; he later served as an Investigating Censor and Qiju Lang, but was dismissed after speaking out against the chief ministers and was put in charge of Chongdao Abbey in Taizhou.

He was then appointed governor of Yuanzhou and transferred to the Zhejiang Eastern Circuit Commission for Judicial Review, before being recalled as Assistant Director of the Palace Library. In the ninth year of Shaoxing he was again appointed Qiju Lang, promoted to Zhongshu Sheren with concurrent duties as lecturer, and then to Geishizhong; in rejecting official submissions he did not spare the powerful. He repeatedly memorialized on clarifying administration and closing avenues of favoritism, and criticized factional self-interest among the executive officials. His opposition to Qin Hui and other chief ministers led to dismissal and two periods of service in honorary posts. In the twenty-third year he retired with the title of Secretary in the Secret Pavilion; after Qin Hui's death he was recalled and, because of illness, retired again as Direct Academician of the Fu Literary Pavilion.

He died in the twelfth month of the thirtieth year of Shaoxing; his age at death is variously given as eighty-two or eighty-three.

Family

His father was Liu Fu and his father-in-law Zang Xun; Ding Anyi is listed as an affinal relation. He had a younger brother, Liu Zhining, and a paternal cousin, Liu Ningzhi; his sons were Liu Luan and Liu Ao, and his granddaughters' husbands were Zhang Ying and Zhou Nan.

Literary work

He was learned and versatile, wrote prose with facility, and his poetry was lofty. His collected works included *Feiyouzhai leigao*, later retitled *Tiaoxi ji*; *Tiaoxi ji* survives in fifty-five juan. He also wrote prefaces for works by Qian Yue and Shi Juhui, epitaphs, sacrificial texts, and biographies (*xingzhuang*) for numerous people, as well as Buddhist temple inscriptions, inscriptions and poems for buildings, and inscriptions on plaques and vessels.