Yang Shen

Yang Shen (1488–1559), courtesy name Yongxiu and styled Shengan, was a native of Xindu, Sichuan, and a Ming dynasty literary scholar and historian. He came first in the imperial examination of 1506 and served as a Hanlin compiler and imperial lecturer. In 1524, during the Great Ritual Controversy, he was flogged at court and exiled to Yongchang Guard in Yunnan, where he spent more than thirty years and died. The lyric "Immortals by the River: The Rolling Yangtze Flows East" is traditionally attributed to him. The History of Ming calls him foremost in breadth of memory and abundance of writings, which numbered over four hundred and were later collected as the Shengan Ji. Thirteen of his works are included here, among them Cipin, Twenty-One Histories Ballads, Shengan Shihua, Mochi Suolu and Shishuo Jiu Zhu, spanning词 criticism, ballads, poetry talks, notes on calligraphy and painting, and annotation of old texts—broad in subject and both scholarly and appreciative in value.