During the Liu Song period of the Southern Dynasties, Yan Yanzhi came from a family that had served as officials for three generations under the Jin Dynasty, but by his time the family fortune had declined, forcing him to live outside the city walls in poverty, and he remained unmarried even at thirty.
Yan Yanzhi was widely read and highly learned. At that time, a Confucian hermit named Zhou Xuzhi opened a school in the capital. Emperor Wu of Song brought Yan Yanzhi to attend the lectures and asked him to question Zhou on the "Three Principles." Yan debated with him, and Zhou was left speechless, unable to match Yan's arguments.
Yan Yanzhi was a man of eccentric and stubborn temperament, utterly indifferent to social niceties. Once in office, he freely criticized court officials and offended the powerful. He often told the chancellors Liu Kan and Yin Jingren, "Do you really think your talents are enough to manage the affairs of the world?" When his son Yan Jun became a high-ranking official and sent him gifts, Yan Yanzhi refused them all, still wearing old clothes, living in his shabby house, and riding a broken cart pulled by a scrawny ox. If he encountered his son's ceremonial procession on the road, he would hide by the roadside. Once, Yan Jun called out to him from his sedan chair, and Yan Yanzhi replied, "I dislike seeing high officials. Today I'm out of luck—I've run into you!" When Yan Jun built a new house, Yan Yanzhi told him, "Build it well, so your descendants won't laugh at your incompetence!"
Yan Yanzhi was a man utterly devoted to wine, often drinking alone in the countryside. When he encountered an acquaintance, he would call out from horseback, "Share a drink with me!" and soon drink himself into a stupor. Once, Emperor Wen of Song summoned him repeatedly, but Yan was nowhere to be found—he was in a tavern, bare-chested and singing funeral dirges, completely drunk.
The poet Yan Yanzhi, famed alongside the great Xie Lingyun as the "Yan-Xie" duo of their era, was known for his quicker wit. When Emperor Wen of the Song Dynasty once commanded both to compose poems on the spot, Yan finished swiftly while Xie labored long. Puffed with pride, Yan asked the critic Bao Zhao, "Between Xie Lingyun and me, whose poetry is superior?" Bao Zhao replied, "Xie's poems are like freshly bloomed lotus flowers—naturally lovely; yours are like spread brocade and displayed embroidery—a dazzling riot of color."
The idiom "spreading brocade and arranging embroidery" is used to describe ornate literary embellishment in poetry and prose.
Source: *History of the Southern Dynasties*, "Biography of Yan Yanzhi"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "铺锦列绣" came to describe how ornate literary embellishment in poetry and prose.