Mi Fu

Mi Fu (1051-1107) was a painter, poet, calligrapher and art theorist of the early Song dynasty, and Xiangyang keeps a shrine for him on Yanjiang Road in Fancheng District. The compound began as a hermitage in the Yuan dynasty, was enlarged in the Ming, and was rebuilt in the Kangxi reign of the Qing, when the hermitage became a shrine and its name changed from an to a ci. It covers 16,000 square metres on a central axis with four courtyards, and holds fifty-eight steles and forty-five rubbings of Mi Fu's own calligraphy. The State Council entered it in the national list of key cultural relic protection units on 25 May 2006, and it had been a provincial protection unit since 1956.