page_title: Ouyang Xiu
section_title: Historian
hierarchical_section_title: Ouyang Xiu / Historian
caption_attribution_description: English: "Colophon to Catalogue of Antiquities" - scroll, paper. 27.2x171.2 cm. Located at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. 中文: 集古錄跋 - 卷, 紙本. 27.2x171.2 cm. 在臺灣國立故宮博物院
context_page_description: Ouyang Xiu, courtesy name Yongshu, also known by his art names Zuiweng and Liu Yi Jushi, was a Chinese essayist, historian, poet, calligrapher, politician, and epigrapher of the Song dynasty. A much celebrated writer, both among his contemporaries and in subsequent centuries, Ouyang Xiu is considered the central figure of the Eight Masters of the Tang and Song. It was he who revived the Classical Prose Movement and promoted it in imperial examinations, paving the way for future masters like Su Shi and Su Zhe.
  Ouyang Xiu's interests as a writer were remarkably diverse. As a historian, he was put in charge by Emperor Renzong of Song of creating the New Book of Tang, which was completed in 1060. He also wrote in his spare time the Historical Records of the Five Dynasties, the only book in the Twenty-Four Histories to have been written in private by a single author. As a poet, he was a noted writer of both the ci and shi genres. But it was his prose writings like Zuiweng Tingji that won him the greatest acclaim. Treatises from Ouyang's voluminous oeuvre range from studies of flowers to literary criticism and political commentaries.
context_section_description: Ouyang led the commission compiling the New Book of Tang, which completed its work in 1060. He wrote New History of the Five Dynasties on his own following his official service. The book was not discovered until after his death.
  As a historian, he has been criticised as overly didactic, but he played an important role in establishing the use of epigraphy as a historiographic technique. Epigraphy, as well as the practice of calligraphy, figured in Ouyang's contributions to Confucian aesthetics. In his Record of the Eastern Study he states how literary minded gentlemen might utilize their leisure to nourish their mental state. The practice of calligraphy and the appreciation of associated art objects were integral to this Daoist-like transformation of intellectual life.
  The Ming dynasty writer Feng Menglong recorded a possibly apocryphal anecdote regarding Ouyang's writing style in his collection of short stories Gujin Tan'gai 《古今譚概》.  As the story goes, during one of Ouyang's trips outside the Hanlin Academy with his associates, they witnessed an unusual event: a horse became spooked, galloped down a busy street, and kicked to death a dog sleeping there.  Ouyang challenged his two associates to express this event in writing.  One wrote: "A dog was lying in the thoroughfare and was kicked to death by a galloping horse," while the other wrote: "A horse galloped down a thoroughfare. A lying dog encountered it and was killed."  Ouyang teased his junior colleagues, "A history book in your hands would remain incomplete after ten thousand volumes."  When asked for his own rendering, Ouyang, replying with a smile, wrote: "A galloping horse killed a dog in its path."
caption: Colophon to Catalogue of Antiquities, Ouyang Xiu, 1064 – National Palace Museum read right-to-left)
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