Fang Hui

Life

Orphaned young, Fang Hui studied under his paternal uncle Fang Zhuan; his father was Fang Zhuo. His eldest son was Fang Cunxin, and he had a great-grandson, Fang Tingjie, and a clan cousin, Fang Gongsun.

As a young man, his poetry won the notice of the prefect Wei Keyu; he followed Wei to Yongjia and was recommended by the military commander Lü Wende. Liu Guang and the monk Shi Xingkui also esteemed him, and he was a friend of Liu Guan and Sun Tongfa.

He passed the jinshi examination in the third year of the Jingding era (1262). His palace-examination result was originally first in Class A, but Jia Sidao placed him first in Class B and assigned him to teach in Suizhou.

Fang Hui initially cultivated Jia Sidao’s favor; after Jia’s defeat at Lugang, he submitted an impeachment memorial against him. He was summoned as taichang si zhubu; after impeaching Wang Yue as unfit to be chief minister, he was sent out as prefect of Jiande.

When Lü Shikui was intendant of Jiangdong, Fang Hui was appointed ganban gongshi; he later served as a Jianghuai dadu si gan official, an along-the-river zhigan, and vice-prefect of Anji. He also served as governor of Mu and Yan prefectures, military governor of Guangde, and in the dadu tiju xiuhe si and anfu shisi ganban gongshi.

In the second year of the Deyou era (1276), Yuan forces reached Jiande. Fang Hui surrendered and was appointed general manager of Jiande Route, concurrently serving as its prefect; in the fourteenth year of the Zhiyuan era (1277), he went north to attend an imperial audience and returned to his former post. He served in the commandery for seven years, then was dismissed after accusations by his son-in-law and disciples and never held office again.

For more than two decades after his dismissal, Fang Hui lived by his poetry among new Yuan grandees, maintained contacts with Song loyalists, and lived for long periods in Qiantang. He is also recorded as having taught disciples. He died in the eleventh year of the Dade era (1307), aged eighty-one.

Poetry and poetics

Fang Hui’s early poetry followed Zhang Lei; later he admired Chen Shidao and Huang Tingjian, rejected late-Tang poetry, and compared himself to Lu You. He selected and commented on regulated verse from the Tang and Song and compiled *Yingkui lüsui*, emphasizing the relations between emotion and scene and between the apparent and the real, with Huang Tingjian, Chen Shidao, and Jianzhai as his principal standards.

The preface to *Tongjiang xuji* presents retirement as a period in which he set aside worldly affairs but never ceased reading and writing poetry. Haiyu Feng Dingyuan criticized Fang Hui’s poetics as confined to the Xijiang school, binding ancient poets to his own views and becoming more erroneous the more elaborate it grew.

Works

*Tongjiang ji* originally comprised sixty-five juan and is now lost; a four-juan version is also listed. *Tongjiang xuji* was written after his dismissal: its preface gives twenty juan, the *Qianqing tang shumu* gives fifty, and thirty-six juan survive.

*Xu gujin kao* is listed as thirty-seven juan, while *Yingkui lüsui*, his selection and criticism of regulated verse from the Tang and Song, continued to circulate. Other titles include 《文選顏鮑謝詩評》, 《桐江集補遺》 in one juan, and 《虛穀閑抄》 in one juan; the last is also found as 《虛古閒抄》.

Assessment

After entering Yuan service, Fang Hui defended his conduct with the lines “大物既歸周，裸士來殷商” and praised the Yuan court as comparable to the Zhenguan era; Zhou Mi consequently denounced him at length in *Guxin zashi* and also accused him of flattering Jia Sidao in *One Hundred Poems on Plum Blossoms*. Although some earlier writers argued that Zhou Mi’s attack may have been motivated by personal resentment, other assessments judged Fang Hui’s character unworthy of praise.