Cheng Tinggui

Life

An avid reader who excelled in poetry, Cheng supported his mother while living in a marketplace quarter. He planted bamboo in the courtyard and named the place where he rested “居竹軒,” also called “居竹”; its setting conveyed a marked taste for the mountains and woods.

Cheng described himself as unsuited to official service, without an inherited estate in the countryside and with no other artistic skill; verse was his one habitual practice, and he composed and recited it morning and evening for his own amusement. A scholar who did not seek office, he also voluntarily abandoned the civil-service examinations.

Late in life, amid turmoil, he fled to Wu and endured arduous travels; he died at Yunjian at more than seventy years of age.

Poetics and associations

Zhang Zhu, styled Zhongju and from Hedong, became his friend across generations; they exchanged visits over wine almost daily.

In Guangling they exchanged poems, and Liu Qin judged Cheng’s reputation to have equaled Zhang Zhu’s.

Zou Yi praised Cheng for working the emotions of the Six Dynasties into Tang poetic prosody and transforming ordinary language into incisive lines; Liu Qin, in turn, found his pentasyllabic verse natural and unornamented, and his heptasyllabic regulated verse particularly accomplished and deeply consonant with Tang models.

Zhang Zhu, in a note on his collection, said that Cheng devoted himself deeply to poetry and owed much of his tonal pattern and formal technique to him.

Beyond Zhang Zhu, Cheng exchanged verse with Ma Yulin and Fang Congyi.

He composed a memorial text for Yu Que, wrote inscriptions on paintings and calligraphic works associated with Ke Jiusi and Wang Mian, and also wrote farewell poems and prefaces for people such as Han E.

Works

His works included 《居竹軒集》, also known as 《居竹軒詩集》.

After his death, his friends Gao Su and Liu Qin gathered and printed his surviving poems; the front matter of 《居竹軒詩集》 names Zhang Zhu, Wei Su, Gao Su, Zou Yi, and Liu Qin among its preface writers.