Background
Guan Bo was born in 719, during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong. His family was from Wei Prefecture (衛州, in modern Puyang, Henan) and claimed ancestry from the late Han Dynasty general Guan Yu. Late in Emperor Xuanzong's Tianbao era (742-756), Guan Bo passed the imperial examinations. During the subsequent reign of Emperor Xuanzong's son Emperor Suzong, when the general Deng Jingshan (鄧景山) served as the military governor (Jiedushi) of Huainan Circuit (淮南, headquartered in modern Yangzhou, Jiangsu), Deng invited Guan to serve as a secretary under him. Guan subsequently returned to the capital Chang'an to serve in the imperial guard corps, and then as You Bujue (右補闕), a low-level official at the legislative bureau of government (中書省, Zhongshu Sheng). He was said to be well-versed in philosophy and metaphysics, particularly Buddhist philosophy.
Read more about this topic: Guan Bo
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)