Wang Wei

• Born: 699
• Died: 759
• Chinese/Japanese: 王維 (Wáng Wéi / Ou I)

Wang Wei was a Chinese scholar-official counted alongside Li Bai, Du Fu, and Bai Juyi as one of the greatest Chinese poets in history; Wang is also sometimes described as a paragon of the ideal Confucian scholar gentleman.

Wang was originally from Qixian County in China's Shanxi province; late in life, he made his retirement in Lantian County, near Chang'an. Of his works, his poems & paintings depicting his villa at Wangchuan are some of the best known and most celebrated. He is also credited with being one of the first, or at least one of the most famous, to describe a painting as a poem in visual form, and a poem as a painting in words, thus expressing the essential unity of the two forms.