1. Family background Li Shangyin once claimed to have the same ancestry as the royal family of the Tang Dynasty. After Zhang Caitian's research, it was confirmed that he was a distant clan member of the Tang Dynasty royal family. However, there is no official citizenship document to prove this, so it can be considered that the blood relationship between Li Shangyin and the Tang Dynasty royal family is very distant. Li Shangyin affirmed his royal family status several times in poems and articles. However, it is obvious that he did not get any real benefits from this.
2. Li Shangyin’s family background can be traced back to his great ancestor Li She. The most senior administrative position Li She ever held was the magistrate of Meiyuan County; his great-grandfather Li Shuheng (his first uncle was Shuhong) was a county captain in Anyang; his grandfather Li Er was a clerk in Xingzhou and joined the army; his father Li Si was a censor in the palace. When Li Shangyin was born, Li Si was appointed as the county magistrate of Huojia (now Huojia County, Henan).
3. Name, surname, and nickname. Generally speaking, men in ancient China inherited their surname from their father and were named by their father or other elders. The surname and nickname were mostly chosen by men after they reached adulthood. According to the available information, it is impossible to determine who named Li Shangyin, but the two nicknames "Yuxi Sheng" and "Fan Nansheng" were given by Li Shangyin himself.
4. According to Huang Shizhong, "Shang Yin" means "Shangshan hermit", which comes from the allusion of "Shangshan Sihao"; and "Yishan" means a person who lives in seclusion and can do righteousness. .
5. "Yuxi" is a valley at the foot of Wangwu Mountain in Jiyuan, Henan today. It is said that Li Shangyin practiced Taoism nearby in his youth.
6. "Fannan" refers to Fanchuan in the south of Chang'an (now Xi'an, Shaanxi). It has beautiful scenery. "From Weiqu to the south, there are long canals, rich soil, vegetable gardens and rice fields, and there are many bamboos." Qi Cuo, the chickens and dogs in the fields, just like in the pictures of water villages in the south of the Yangtze River." (Fu Zengxiang's "Qin You Ri Lu") In the Tang Dynasty, bureaucrats and scholar-bureaucrats liked to buy villas in this area for recreation and entertainment. It is possible that Li Shangyin often visited Fanchuan when he lived in Chang'an.