Qiji Xin

Born in 1140 in what is now Jinan, Xin Qiji lived during the Southern Song dynasty and became famous both as a military figure and as one of China's greatest writers of ci lyric poetry. He grew up in the north after Jurchen forces had taken that region, and that experience shaped his lifelong desire to see the Song recover lost territory.

His life was unusually dramatic for a poet. Still young, he joined anti-Jin resistance efforts and later served the Southern Song government, but his strong views often left him out of favor. Even while moving through official posts and periods of frustration, he kept writing, and his poems gave the ci form a broader emotional range—bold, reflective, sorrowful, and intensely personal all at once.

More than eight centuries later, he remains one of the defining voices of Song literature. Readers return to him for the energy of his language, the depth of his patriotism, and the way his poems hold public duty and private feeling in the same breath.