Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) was one of the most fascinating figures of the Northern Song dynasty. Historian, poet, essayist, calligrapher, statesman and above all, a bibliophile whose passion for books left a lasting mark on Chinese culture.
His story begins far from privilege. He was born in Mianyang in Southwestern China, though his family’s ancestral roots lay in Luling, Jiangxi.
His father, a minor judge, died when Ouyang was only three. His mother, Lady Zheng, became his first teacher, introducing him to words with simple tools and fierce determination.
With little formal tutoring, he was largely self-taught, reading everything he could find. In 1030, he cracked the prestigious jinshi examination – the highest rung of the imperial civil service and entered government. But even as he rose through the ranks, his true calling was books and the preservation of knowledge.
A Collector at Heart
Ouyang Xiu wasn’t just a reader. He was a relentless book collector. His private library reportedly housed close to 10,000 volumes, an astonishing number for his time. But he didn’t stop at books. He gathered stone and bronze inscriptions, epigraphic rubbings, calligraphic works and colophons (publisher’s emblems at the end of the book).
What drove him was not vanity but preservation. He knew that steles wear away, manuscripts decay and calligraphy fades. He collected so they could survive. He admired the clarity of earlier masters like Han Yu and valued not only what words said, but how they looked: the brushstrokes, the forms, the aesthetics.
One anecdote captures both his scale and wit. Listing his treasures for a guest, he said he had 10,000 folios of books, 1,000 scrolls of inscriptions, one qin, one chess set and a pot of wine. The guest was astonished and remarked that these were five great treasures, Ouyang replied, “I am the sixth.” It was playful, but it showed how inseparable he was from his collection.
The Historian and Reformer
Ouyang Xiu’s collections fed directly into his scholarship. He wrote the New History of the Five Dynasties almost entirely by himself while in exile and he oversaw the official New Book of Tang. These were not dry chronicles. They combined rigorous history with moral judgment, weighing rulers, rebels and officials with honesty and clarity.
He had a gift for cutting through clutter. A famous story tells of two junior writers who composed elaborate accounts of a trivial event. Ouyang cut it down to a single line: “A galloping horse killed a dog in its path.” For him, history was about precision, not performance.
Ouyang was also a poet who excelled in both shi and ci – the ancient forms of Chinese poetry. His verse was humorous, self-deprecating and filled with everyday scenes – friends, antiques, food, wine and landscapes. It reminds me of Marcel Proust who much later captured the texture of ordinary French lives in exquisite detail.
Ouyang’s prose essay Record of the Old Drunkard’s Pavilion gave the world a line still quoted today: “The Old Toper cares not for the wine; his interest lies in the landscape.” In Chinese, this became proverbial: your true interest lies deeper than what it seems.
Alongside his literary career, he served as an outspoken official. He supported the Qingli Reforms in the 1040s, pushing for cleaner examinations and fairer appointments. His honesty cost him dearly. He was demoted and even exiled but he never abandoned his principles.
Why Ouyang Xiu Still Matters
What makes Ouyang Xiu remarkable is how his bibliophilia turned into action. He collected books not just for prestige but for safeguarding cultural memory. His reforms aimed to make government fairer, even at personal cost. His essays and poems turned everyday life into lasting art.
In the end, Ouyang shows us that loving books is not passive. It’s stewardship. To collect is to protect. To preserve is to strengthen memory. That is why he belongs among the greatest bibliophiles in history.
Picture him late in life: sitting in a pavilion, a chessboard beside him, a qin resting nearby, a pot of wine within reach, and ten thousand volumes stacked around him. For Ouyang Xiu, these were not mere possessions. They were his landscape: the books, the wine, the artifacts, all part of a life spent reading, preserving and shaping how a civilization speaks to itself.
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