Biography
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Xie Lingyun (simplified Chinese: 谢灵运; traditional Chinese: 謝靈運; Wade–Giles: Hsieh Ling-yün; 385–433), also known as the Duke of Kangle (康樂公), was one of the foremostChinese poets of the Southern and Northern Dynasties and a famous practitioner of the Six Dynasties poetry.
Life
Xie Lingyun was a descendant of two of the most important families of the laterEastern Jin times, the Xie and the Wang families. His grandfather was the general Xie Xuan, a general who is best known for repelling the Former Qin army at the Battle of Fei River, thus preventing the Former Qin emperor Fu Jiān from destroying Jin, and thus allowing the continuation of the southern dynastic kingdoms.
Birth and youth
His father died early, and the boy was brought up by a Buddhist monk, Du Ming, in what was then Qiantang but now Hangzhou, a cosmopolitan metropolis at the southern end of theGrand Canal, a market nexus for maritime trade and transport to and from the north, and an area widely famed for its scenery with surrounding hills and the spectacular West Lake.
Although, returning home from the monastery in 399, when he would have been in his mid-teens, Xie retained a lifelong Buddhist practice. Furthermore the family estate itself was a scenic wonder. Located in Shi'ning (modern Shangyu township, Shaoxing prefecture,Zhejiang province—but administered and named differently then), the estate had been carefully chosen by his grandfather, the successful general, both for esthetics of beauty and its seclusion, who then planned and laid it out according to his wishes. The estate included a significant hill to the north, upon which was the family homestead, and there was a matching hill to the south, each hill replete with its craggy cliffs and cascading streams: and, in between the two hills stood a lake. The family home on the northern hill had been terraced and developed with well-planned and situated orchards, gardens, walking paths, and ornate pavilions, all done with a mind to preserve and increase the viewer's pleasure: the south hill during the youth of Xie Lingyun was left as somewhat of a wild preserve; but, between the two there was a whole range of fields and crops as well as wild plant and animal life.
Even the secluded family estate was not necessarily safe during these turbulent times; and, when a major rebellion broke out, the family abandoned their country living in favor of the relative safety of the capital city, Jiankang (modern Nanjing), for the four years of its course. The Xie family received official residence in a fancy mansion, where their entertainments were among the foremost for the luxury and display fashionable at that time: that the young duke (having inherited the title when his father died) was well off financially (having also inherited the three thousand household fiefdom which went with the ducal title) and was also skilled in the expected literary abilities altogether went towards placing him in the highlight of the capital's social scene, and (with the family connections) appearing to be at the very beginning of a very successful official career.
