Li Ao ( zh, t=李翱, p=Lǐ Áo) (772–841),

courtesy name A courtesy name ( zh, s=字, p=zì, l=character), also known as a style name, is an additional name bestowed upon individuals at adulthood, complementing their given name. This tradition is prevalent in the East Asian cultural sphere, particula ...

Xizhi (), was a Chinese philosopher and

prose Prose is language that follows the natural flow or rhythm of speech, ordinary grammatical structures, or, in writing, typical conventions and formatting. Thus, prose ranges from informal speaking to formal academic writing. Prose differs most n ...

writer of the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...

Biography

Li was born in present-day Tianshui, Gansu, but some accounts relate that he was from Zhao, Hebei. After achieving the degree of Jinshi in 798, he joined the imperial bureaucracy and served in the history department at Changan. In 809, he was assigned to the southern provinces and made the trip with his pregnant wife from

Luoyang Luoyang ( zh, s=洛阳, t=洛陽, p=Luòyáng) is a city located in the confluence area of the Luo River and the Yellow River in the west of Henan province, China. Governed as a prefecture-level city, it borders the provincial capital of Zheng ...

Guangzhou Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...

over nine months. The course they took included the modern provinces of

Henan Henan; alternatively Honan is a province in Central China. Henan is home to many heritage sites, including Yinxu, the ruins of the final capital of the Shang dynasty () and the Shaolin Temple. Four of the historical capitals of China, Lu ...

, Anhui,

Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...

, Zhejiang,

Jiangxi ; Gan: ) , translit_lang1_type2 = , translit_lang1_info2 = , translit_lang1_type3 = , translit_lang1_info3 = , image_map = Jiangxi in China (+all claims hatched).svg , mapsize = 275px , map_caption = Location ...

and

Guangdong ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...

. His record of the trip, the ''Lainan Lu'' (來南録, "Record of Coming to the South"), contains detailed descriptions of medieval southern China and is considered one of the earliest forms of the diary. At the time of his death in Xiangyang, Hubei, Li held the position of Governor of East Shannan Circuit (now

Hubei Hubei is a province of China, province in Central China. It has the List of Chinese provincial-level divisions by GDP, seventh-largest economy among Chinese provinces, the second-largest within Central China, and the third-largest among inland ...

and

). There is some debate about the year of his death. The ''

Old Book of Tang The ''Old Book of Tang'', or simply the ''Book of Tang'', is the first classic historical work about the Tang dynasty, comprising 200 chapters, and is one of the Twenty-Four Histories. Originally compiled during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdo ...

'' gives the date of 841. While the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

historians, however, have argued that it should be 836. Late imperial scholars regarded Li as the founder of one of the ten great schools of philosophy in the Tang and

Song A song is a musical composition performed by the human voice. The voice often carries the melody (a series of distinct and fixed pitches) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs have a structure, such as the common ABA form, and are usu ...

dynasties. As a philosopher, Li was heavily influenced by Buddhist philosophers like Liang Su and also the great

neo-Confucian Neo-Confucianism (, often shortened to ''lǐxué'' 理學, literally "School of Principle") is a Morality, moral, Ethics, ethical, and metaphysics, metaphysical Chinese philosophy influenced by Confucianism, which originated with Han Yu (768� ...

Han Yu. His extensive writings are preserved in the ''Liwengong Wenji'' (). This work is presumably a later edition of the ten chapters of the ''Li Ao Ji'' () as referenced in the '' New Book of Tang''. Some of the few poems he produced can also be found in the '' Quan Tang Shi'' (). Li's maternal grandsons Lu Xie and Zheng Tian both served as chancellors under Emperor Xizong of Tang.

Works cited

References

*Li, Jinquan
Li Ao
'' Encyclopedia of China'' (Philosophy Edition), 1st ed. Philosophers from Gansu Chinese Confucianists 772 births 841 deaths Tang dynasty essayists Tang dynasty philosophers 9th-century Chinese philosophers People from Tianshui Tang dynasty government officials {{Confucianism-stub