Who they were
Poet, essayist, calligrapher, painter and statesman, Su Shi passed the jinshi examination with distinction in 1057. He opposed Wang Anshi’s New Policies and paid for it with repeated exile — to Huangzhou after the “Crow Terrace poetry trial” of 1079, later to Huizhou and to Hainan island.
What they did
At Huangzhou he wrote the two Red Cliff rhapsodies and the ci masterpiece “Niannujiao: Remembering the Past at Red Cliff” (1082); his beloved Mid-Autumn lyric — “When did the bright moon first appear?” — had come earlier, written at Mizhou in 1076. As governor of Hangzhou he built the Su Causeway across West Lake. Even Dongpo pork is named for him.
Legacy
One of the Eight Great Prose Masters of Tang and Song, he became the enduring model of the exiled literatus who turns adversity into art.