Liu Xie courtesy name Yanhe (彦和), was a Chinese

Chinese people

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

 writer. He was the author of China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

's greatest work of literary aesthetics

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

, The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons

The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons

The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons is China's first work of aesthetics and also the first systematic work of literary criticism from that country...

《文心雕龍》. His biography is included in the Liangshu.

A native of today's Zhenjiang

Zhenjiang

Zhenjiang is a prefecture-level city in the southwest of Jiangsu province in the eastern People's Republic of China . Sitting on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, it borders the provincial capital of Nanjing to the west, Changzhou to the east, and Yangzhou across the river to the north.Once...

, Liu's traced his ancestry to Shandong

Shandong

' is a Province located on the eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River and served as a pivotal cultural and religious site for Taoism, Chinese...

. He was orphaned in his youth and chose not to marry, either because of poverty or conviction (or both). Liu studied Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

 with Sengyou

Sengyou

Sengyou was a Buddhist monk, hailing from Nanjing, then called Jiankang . He became a monk at 14 at which time he studied and eventually taught the Vinaya...

 and helped edit sutra

Sutra

Sūtra is an aphorism or a collection of such aphorisms in the form of a manual. Literally it means a thread or line that holds things together and is derived from the verbal root siv-, meaning to sew , as does the medical term...

s at the Dinglin Monastery (定林寺) until his death during the Liang Dynasty

Liang Dynasty

The Liang Dynasty , also known as the Southern Liang Dynasty , was the third of the Southern dynasties in China and was followed by the Chen Dynasty...

.