Yao Sui

Life

His father was Yao Zhen, whose death is given as 1226 in one family entry; biographical accounts say that Yao Sui was orphaned young and was raised by his paternal uncle Yao Shu. The family record also names Liang Shouzhong as a nephew and Yao Zhi as a son. As a boy he studied with Yao Shu at Sumen; as an adult he submitted his writings to Xu Heng of Henei for correction, and Xu praised his diction, after which Yao became Xu’s disciple.

In Zhiyuan 7, when Xu Heng was Director of the National Academy, he memorialized for the recall of twenty former pupils; Yao Sui was conveyed by post to the academy and began his career as Literary Instructor at the Prince of Qin’s palace. The date of this appointment is also given as Zhiyuan 12 (1275). He then supervised schools in Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Zhongxing, served as Vice Commissioner of the Shaanxi-Hanzhong Circuit (also styled Judicial Vice Commissioner), was transferred to the Shannan-Hubei Circuit, entered the Hanlin as a Direct Academician, and became Assistant Administrator in the Directorate of Agriculture.

He served under the Yuan emperors Shizu, Chengzong, and Wuzong. In the first year of Yuanzhen, as a Hanlin Academician, he co-directed with Reader Gao Daoning the compilation of the Veritable Records of Shizu; in the fifth year of Dade (1301), he went out as Surveillance Commissioner for Jiangdong, was transferred to Taiping because of illness, and was appointed Vice Director of the Jiangxi Provincial Secretariat. In the first year of Zhida he became Guest Attendant to the Heir Apparent and was promoted to Academician with the title of chengzhi and Grand Tutor to the Heir Apparent; in the following year (the second year of Zhida, 1309), he was made Grand Master for Glorious Rewards and Hanlin Academician-in-Chief, concurrently Director of Imperial Decrees and Compiler of the National History, and had risen to Grand Academician of the Jixian Academy. By the fourth year of Zhida he had obtained leave to retire; he died at the age of seventy-six and received the posthumous name Wen.

Literary work and writings

Yao Sui’s prose was expansive and learned, vigorous without being uncontrolled, firm without being severe, and stately in its amplitude; it was said to bear the manner of the Western Han. One assessment calls him the leading prose master before the Renzong emperor’s Yan you era and credits him with changing the literary habits of the late Song. In a preface to his collection, Zhang Yanghao described his talent as capable of sweeping expansion and contraction, distilling what was diffuse, and finding novelty in the worn-out, and compared him with Changli of the Tang and Luling of the Song.

His works include the Mu’an Collection, also titled the Mu’an Literary Collection, in fifty juan; the title Mu’an Collection is also found in another form, and his ci poetry was included in the collection.

Associations

Yao Sui was a friend of Zhao Mengfu and wrote a preface to Yang Huan’s Ziyang Master’s Collected Works; he also appears alongside Zhao Mengfu, Wu Yichang, and others in the preface to Tang Poems for Chanting.