Zhu Zhishan, original named Yunming, was born on Ming Dynasty of 1460 in Changzhou( now Wu County). Because he has 6 fingers on his left hand when he was born, he called himself Zhishan which means with one more fingers.
When Zhu was young, he shows his genius in arts and literature. He can write at the age of five and write poetry at nine. He is specializing in handwriting. The words and the article he writes are famous and well known the local people. He passes the provincial civil service examination under the old Chinese examination system when he is 32, howecer, because of his hate of being in official circles, he go back to his hometown and make lots of friends.
Zhu is one of the Four Gifted Scholars of Southern China. Though he is 16 years older than Tang Yin who is also one of the Four Gifted Scholars of Southern China, they are best friends. They are funny, brilliant, free and easy, and they like sightseeing tours and help people. With Zhu’s good handwriting and Tang’s beautiful picture, people use Zhu and Tang instead for handwriting and picture.
Zhu died in 1526 at the age of 67. After he died, he is berried in suburbs of Zhuzhou City. However, as the time passes, the grave can not be seen any more.
Wen Zhengming, with another name Hengshan Lay, is one of the four gifted scholar of southern China in ancient. He pass the highest level exam at the age of 54, so someone calls him “Wen Shizhao”.
Wen Zhengming comes from a scholarly family. His grandfather and father are writers. However, Wen Zhengming is not intelligent in his childhood. His learn drawing with Shenzhou when he is a little old.
He was talented in painting human figures and flowers.He is good at landscapes paintings and green-blue painting, which made him the leader of “Wu Men School literati” and honored with Shen Zhou,Tang Yin and Qiu Ying as the Four Great Masters in the Ming Dynasty.
September 29th, 2009
Hero
Tang Yin, 1470-1523, has another name Tang Bohu, was born in a businessmen’s family. He is very clever when he was young. But some misfortunes come to his family at his 20’s, his parents, wife and sister die one after another, his family environment becomes bad to worse. Then, under the help of his good friend Zhu Zhishan, he started to study hard. At the age of 29, he took an examination of the local government and got the title of No.1 called “Xieuan”. At the age of 30, Tang went to the capital and took part in the central government’s examination. However, he was involved in a cheating case. From then on, he began his life selling his pictures.
Although Tang was in talent, having dreams, ambitions and a talent penman in history, his character of highly critical of society makes him hard to live. His path through life was hard, and finally die a dog’s death when he was 54. Just before his death, he wrote a poem shows that he is both envy and be reluctant to leave the world.
All in his life, he is good at drawing scenes, people, flowers and birds and achieve some success in both handwriting and literature. And he is being considered of the head of “The Four Gifted Scholar of Southern China”.
