A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Ch'ên P'êng-nien (陳彭年)
237 Ch’ên P’êng-nien 陳彭年 (T. 永年). A.D. 961-1017. A smooth-tongued artful courtier, known as "the nine-tailed fox", who rose to be Minister of State under the Emperor Chên Tsung of the Sung dynasty. He was the only son of his mother, and she tried hard to keep him from over-study; but he managed to elude her watchfulness, and after becoming a pupil of Hsü Hsüan, graduated as chin shih and entered the public service. He was at one time employed upon the dynastic annals, and was the author of the 唐記, and of a collection of masterpieces in literature. He was also employed, together with 丘雍 Ch'iu Yung, upon the revision of the well-known 黃韻, a phonetic dictionary containing over 26,000 characters arranged according to 206 finals under the four tones. Canonised as 文僖.