Wu Fu

Life

His father was 吳師錫 and his father-in-law 郭澠; his agnatic cousins included 吳謙 and 吳詠, and his nephew was 吳渭. His eldest son was 吳津 (1133–1196), followed by 吳洪, 吳洎, and 吳沃; his sons-in-law were 王鏞 and 陳揚善.

He passed the Presented Scholar examination in the second year of Emperor Gaozong's Shaoxing era. One version gives the corresponding year as 1113. His appointments included county lieutenant of Yueqing. After the examination he served as a revision official and as a Corrector in the Palace Secretariat, then as assistant prefect of Chu, Wu, and Yue, and later as prefect of Chu. He was dismissed for refusing to attach himself to Qin Hui. At the end of Shaoxing, when Jin forces moved south, he urged Gaozong to lead a personal expedition and proposed that the court halt at Jiankang. In the thirty-first year of Shaoxing he was summoned as Investigating Censor, promoted to Palace Censor and Vice Minister of Revenue, and sent out as prefect of Wu. After Xiaozong's accession, he served successively as prefect of Wu, Shaoxing, Lin'an, Taiping, and Longxing; at court he served as a jishizhong and as Vice Minister of Punishments, Personnel, and Rites. Other appointments included military prefect of Nanping, governor of Lin'an Military Prefecture, Direct Academician of the Huiyou Pavilion, and Compiler of the Jiying Hall. Because his forthrightness made him a target of hostility, he sought to leave office; he later became prefect of Lin'an as Direct Academician of the Fuwen Pavilion and was placed in charge of the Taiping Xingguo Palace. In the third year of Qiandao (1167) he was recalled as prefect of Taiping; in the fifth year he was transferred to Longxing, and in the sixth he retired from active service because of age. In the first year of Chunxi (1174) he retired with the title of Academician of the Longtu Pavilion, also given as Direct Academician of the Longtu Pavilion; he died in the tenth year of Chunxi, aged eighty.

Associations

Wu Fu praised Jiang Jin for “serving without compromising himself, leaving office without forgetting his place,” and said that his loyalty and intelligence surpassed the ordinary. His relationship with Qin Hui is represented both as friendship and as exclusion by Qin Hui. He and Li Zhiyi exchanged prefaces, and Zhou Bida wrote the preface to Lake and Mountain Collection. He belonged to a poetry society with Bao Changchao, Zuo Dagong, and Zhu Shitong and exchanged poems with Lin Huizhi; Zhu Xi wrote his spirit-way inscription, while Wang Zhouyao and Wang Weisheng later supplied postscripts to Lake and Mountain Collection.

Works

He wrote Lake and Mountain Collection. Lake and Mountain Collection originally comprised 25 juan, with 3 juan of ci lyrics, a separate collection of 1 juan, and 8 juan of memorials; all were lost. Qing editors reconstructed a 10-juan edition from the Yongle Encyclopedia, with a preface by Zhou Bida. The corpus is also catalogued as a 30-juan Poetry and Prose Collection of Wu Fu and a 5-juan Collection of Memorials by Wu Fu.