Su Shi
2 min readSu Shi（1037-1101）was a writer，poet，artist，calligrapher and statesman of the Song Dynasty，one of the major poets of the Song era.His zi or courtesy name is Zizhan and his hao or pseudonym Dongpo Jushi，and he is often referred to as Su Dongpo.
Life
Su Shi was born in Meishan，near Mount Emei in what is now Sichuan province.His brother Su Che and his father Su Xun were both famous literati.In 1057，he and his brother passed the municipal（highest-level）civil service examinations to attain the degree of jinshi，a prerequisite for high government office at that time.Throughout the next twenty years，he held a variety of government positions throughout China；most notably in Hangzhou，where he was responsible for constructing a pedestrian causeway across the West Lake that still bears his name:sudi.
He was often at odds with a political faction headed by Wang Anshi.This faction’s rise to power eventually resulted in Su Shi being exiled twice to remote places；first（1080-1084）to Huangzhou（now in Hubei province），and the secondtime（1094-1100）to Huizhou（now in Guangdong province）and Hainan island.TheDongpo Academy in Hainan was built on the site of his residence in exile.In Huangzhou，Su Shi lived at a farm called Dongpo（Eastern Slope），from which he took his literary pseudonym.He died in Changzhou，Jiangsu province.
Works
Su Dongpo excelled in the shi，ci and fu forms，as well as prose，calligraphy and painting；some of his notable poems include the First and Second Chibifu（The Red Cliffs，written during his first exile），Nian Nu Jiao:Chibi Huai Gu（Remembering Chibi，to the tune of Nian Nu Jiao）and Shui diao ge tou（Remembering Su Che on the Mid-Autumn Festival）.The bulk of his poems（around 2400）are shi，but his poetic fame rests largely on his 350 ci.He founded the haofang school，which cultivated an attitude of heroic abandon.In both his written works and his visual art，he combined spontaneity，objectivity and vivid descriptions of natural phenomena.He also wrote essays on politics and governance such as Liuhou Lun.
