Collation And Annotation Of Talks Under The Phonenix Tree

Ni Hong, a style Yannian, assumed nameYunqun(云?), Yunqun(耘?), was a commoner that was born in Lingui, Guangxi Province. He went to Guangdong with his father in his childhood. He didn't left there until he was 46 years old. There were a lot of ups and downs of his official career. He got a low positionine level in his early years. Then he left Guangxi for other places such as Min, Tai, Wu,Yue ,Wan,Yu ,Qi, Lu,Chu,etc. He was very poor and unhappy until his late years. The year he died was not clear.Ni was famous for his poem in that age. He studied from some famous poets such as Zhang Weiping and Huang Xiangshi, and was appreciated by them.Ni formed his own poetry style by absorbing many strong points from Wu Weiye, Wang Yuyang and many famous poets of Tang Dynasty. His style of ci came from that of Changzhou, Zhexi factions. As a poet, Ni left poetry works as Tui Sui Zhai poetry anthology(退隧斋诗钞), Continuation (退隧斋诗钞续集) , and ci works as Write dreams under flowers and so on. Though he was famous for that in Guangxi, no study works about that had been done in recent years.Talks under the phoenix tree(桐阴清话) is a book consisting mainly of short sketches;. In that book, Ni told many stories about people and events he had experienced in Qing Dynasty. With that book, we can learn more about Ni and persons qualified to teach, especially his poetry theory. The most important notable points of that book are refined and implicit. Ni got a lot of influences from Liang Shaoren's Liang Ban Qiu Yu An essay(两般秋鱼鑫随笔). The book is looked as a coronach of Liang Shaoren and it also influenced some essay writers after that such as Kuang Zhouyi.