Huang Ruheng was a noted Chinese

Chinese people

The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....

 calligrapher

East Asian calligraphy

East Asian calligraphy is a form of calligraphy widely practised and revered in the Sinosphere. This most often includes China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The East Asian calligraphic tradition originated and developed from China. There is a general standardization of the various styles of...

 of the late Ming Dynasty

Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...

. His courtesy name was Zhenfu (贞父, “True Father”) and his pen name was Yuyong Jushi (寓庸居士, “Refined Scholar Dwelling in Simplicity”).

Huang was a native of the cultural mecca Hangzhou

Hangzhou

Hangzhou , formerly transliterated as Hangchow, is the capital and largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China. Governed as a sub-provincial city, and as of 2010, its entire administrative division or prefecture had a registered population of 8.7 million people...

. In 1598, he passed his Jinshi examination and held an official post in Jiangxi

Jiangxi

' is a southern province in the People's Republic of China. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south, it shares a border with Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to...

. His calligraphy style combined the manner of two Song Dynasty

Song Dynasty

The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...

 masters, Su Shi

Su Shi

Su Shi , was a writer, poet, artist, calligrapher, pharmacologist, gastronome, and statesman of the Song Dynasty, and one of the major poets of the Song era. His courtesy name was Zizhan and his pseudonym was Dongpo Jushi , and he is often referred to as Su Dongpo...

 and Mi Fei. Huang’s best known calligraphy was, in his lifetime, reproduced in the Ming period painting-calligraphy album Tangshi Huapu (唐诗画谱, "Paintings of Tang Period Poems"), which itself was copied onto additional paintings. As was common in the Ming period, Huang perhaps did multiple versions of this Tang period poem by Liu Changqing

Liu Changqing

Liu Changqing , and whose name, especially in older English transliteration, appears as "Liu Chang-ch'ing", was a poet of the Middle Tang Dynasty, and eleven of whose poems were collected in the popular anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems.-See also:...

(劉長卿) and others. His calligraphy was certainly sought after during his lifetime and in the period right after his death. Huang was also something of a poet. Examples of his verse can be found in various collections. A photo of a surviving example in Japan of his Liu Changqing poem is reproduced here. The poem reads:

Seeking Out Zen Master Lanjo

Autumn grasses and yellow flowers cover the ancient path;

In the glade beyond, from where does someone’s smoke come?

Only the mountain monk has grown old in the hills;

Just the cold pines have seen anyone young.