Wang Bo (c. 650 – c. 676), courtesy name Zi'an, was a native of Longmen County, Dai prefecture (present-day Hejin, Shanxi). A famous poet and writer of the Tang Dynasty, together with Yang Jiong, Lu Zhaolin and Luo Binwang, they were collectively known as the "Four Masters of the Early Tang Dynasty". At the age of six, he was able to write articles and poems, and when he was less than twenty years old, he participated in the imperial court countermeasures and became a jinshi and became a asasaka.
On poetry and thesis collection, Wang Bo is talented, literary, young, and famous in the world. His poetic achievements can be called the first of the Tang Dynasty, the crown of the four masters, and how many famous sentences have been passed down through the ages, such as "Send Du Shaofu to Ren Shuzhou" to write about the parting feelings of "confidant in the sea, if the end of the world is adjacent"; such as "The sunset and the lone bird fly together, and the autumn water is long and colorful" in the "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion".
However, if the character of the person cannot be compared with his poetry, it can be said that the poetry is a good person. After Wang Bo became a dynasty sanlang, he served as a cultivator of the Pei King's Mansion, and he usually courted the Pei King, and won the favor of Li Xian, the King of Pei, and tasted the suspicion of flattery. Once, Li Xian, the king of Pei, fought cocks with Li Xian, the king of The Ying Dynasty, and Wang Bo, in order to please the king of Pei, wrote a "Chicken Text of the King of Pei" to fight against the king of The Ying. Unexpectedly, this article reached Emperor Gaozong of Tang, who was displeased when he read it, and sighed angrily: "Crooked talent, crooked talent!" The second king of cockfighting, Wang Bo, as a doctor, did not exhort, but instead made a text, deliberately fabricated, exaggerated the situation, this person's character is not good, should be immediately expelled from the palace. Emperor Gaozong of Tang believed that this article was intended to provoke the relationship between the two kings, so he expelled him from Chang'an. As a result, the newly opened career he had painstakingly managed was destroyed in one fell swoop.
In the second year of Xianheng (671), Wang Bo returned to Chang'an from Shudi to participate in the scientific election. With the help of his friend Ling Jiyou (then a judicial officer in Yuzhou), he found a position in the army in Yuzhou. During this period, Wang Bo once had a very good relationship with a person named Cao Da, an imperial official slave, and later Cao Da secretly hid in Wang Bo's house after committing a crime. Wang Bo was afraid that the matter would leak out, so he killed Cao Da. If people do not know unless they do nothing, later this matter was exposed, according to the law Wang Bo should be a capital crime, but just in time for the imperial court to pardon the world, Wang Bo was pardoned for capital crimes and only removed from office. However, it also affected his father Wang Fuyu, who joined the army from Yongzhou Sigong and was demoted to Jiaozhi County, who was far away from the southern wilderness. Later, Wang Bo crossed the sea by boat to visit his father, and on the way back, he sailed in the South China Sea, and when he encountered wind and waves, Wang Bo drowned in the water due to panic, and died at the age of twenty-nine.
Therefore, although Wang Bo's poetry is high, his character is worth a questionable value. Was his early death also his cause and effect?