His family name was Wang, his given name Wei. The linguistic reconstruction of Wang Wei's name in Middle Chinese, according to Hugh M. Stimson, in terms of historical phonetics is "I??ng Ui". Wang chose the style name Mojie, and would sign his works Wang Weimojie because Wei-mo-jie was a reference to Vimalakirti, the central figure of the Buddhist sutra by that name.

Wang Wei was a devout Buddhist and a vegetarian, who had a successful career as an official as well as achieving eminence as a poet and a painter.

Early years

Originally from Qi (present-day Qi County in Shanxi), Wang Wei moved to Puzhou (today Yongji, Shanxi). He was of Han ethnicity. Born into an aristocratic family, Wang Wei passed the civil service entrance examination in 721 with being awarded Zhuangyuan (placing first in the examination) and had a successful civil service career.

War

During the An Lushan Rebellion he avoided actively serving the insurgents during the capital's occupation by pretending to be deaf; other sources state that he drank medicine which created cankers on his mouth and feigned sickness. After the suppression of the rebellion he was demoted and served as a Taizi Zhongchong (????) and over time was moved to the position of Jishizhong (???) and his last position was held as Shangshu Youcheng (????).

Later years

He spent ten years studying with Chán master Daoguang. After his wife's death in 730, he did not remarry and established a monastery on part of his estate.

He was famous for both his poetry and his paintings, about which Su Shi coined a phrase: "The quality of Wang Wei’s poems can be summed as, the poems hold a painting within them. In observing his paintings you can see that, within the painting there is poetry." He is especially known for his compositions in the Mountains and Streams (???) genre, the landscape school of poetry, along with Meng Haoran; their family names were combined and they are commonly referred to as "Wang Meng" due to their excellence in poetic composition at that time. In his later years Wang Wei lost interest in being a statesman and became more involved in Buddhism and his poems reflected his focus on Zen/Ch'an practice, therefore he was posthumously referred to as the “Poet Buddha”. His works are collected in Secretary General Wang's Anthology, which includes 400 poems. He excelled in painting images of people, bamboo forests and scenery of mountains and rivers. It is recorded that his landscape paintings have two different genres, one of the Father and Son of the Li Family (????) and the other being of strong brush strokes; his work of Picture of Wang River is of the latter, but unfortunately the original no longer exists. His works of Scenery of Snow and Creek and Jinan’s Fusheng Portrait are both realistic in their representation of the subjects.

Poetry

He is best known for his quatrains depicting quiet scenes of water and mist, with few details and little human presence. The Indiana Companion comments that he affirms the world's beauty, while questioning its ultimate reality. It also draws a comparison between the deceptive simplicity of his works and the Chan path to enlightenment, which is built on careful preparation but is achieved without conscious effort.

One of Wang Wei's famous poem is "One-hearted" ("Xiang Si"):

ONE-HEARTED

When those red beans come in springtime,

Flushing on your southland branches,

Take home an armful, for my sake,

As a symbol of our love.

Painting

None of his original paintings survive, but copies of works attributed to him are also landscape with similar qualities. He influenced what became known as the Southern school of Chinese landscape art, which was characterised by strong brushstrokes contrasted with light ink washes.

Wang River collaboration

Wang Wei's most famous poetry, done as a series of couplets to which his friend Pei Di wrote replying couplets, such as the poem often translated "Deer Park" (literally, "Deer Fence"), form a group titled Wang River Collection, inspired by his retirement home and features found in its neighborhood and their correspondences with other places and features. ("Wang" as in the river is a different character that the "Wang" of Wang Wei's name. It literally refers to the outside part of a wheel.) The real life location of Wang Wei's retirement home was in the foothills of the Qinling Mountains, south of the Tang capital city of Chang'an.They record a poet's journey, ostensibly that of Wang Wei and his close friend Pei Di. They are far more universal than a simple journey and have inspired generations of poets since, including recent adaptations such as Pain Not Bread's Introduction to the Introduction to Wang Wei (ISBN 1-894078-09-8), Barry Gifford's Replies to Wang Wei (ISBN 0-88739-441-8) and Gary Blankenship's A River Transformed (ISBN 1-4116-6227-X).

Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz's 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (ISBN 0-918825-14-8) is an essay concerning more than 19 translations of Wang Wei's "Deer Park".

Influence east

Wang Wei was of extensive influence in China and its area of cultural influence, particularly in terms of monochrome ink painting and in terms of his deceptively simple and inciteful Buddhist-influenced poetry.

Influence west

• One of Wang Wei's poems, called Weicheng Qu or "Song of the City of Wei" has been adapted to the famous music melody, Yangguan Sandie or "Three Refrains on the Yang Pass". The most famous version of this melody is that of the guqin, which Wang Wei probably played.

• Wang-Wei's poetry, in translation, formed the inspiration for the final Der Abschied movement of the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler's penultimate completed work, Das Lied von der Erde.

• Wang-Wei's poetry, found in the works of Ernest Fenollosa, also provided inspiration for the American poet Ezra Pound in the creation of Pound's Ideogrammic Method.