Zhong Fang种放

Style & Daoist names

Mingyi, Yunxi Zuihou (The Drunken Marquis of Yunxi)

Period

Northern Song

Dates

955 — 1015

Role

RecluseScholarDisciple of Chen Tuan

Birthplace

Luoyang, Henan

Places of activity

Zhongnan Mountains, Mount Hua (Huashan)

Life

Zhong Fang, style name Mingyi, was a recluse and scholar of the early Northern Song. In his youth he failed the jinshi examination, and lived in reclusion with his mother in Baolin Valley on the Zhongnan Mountains, making a living by lecturing, and styled himself "the Drunken Marquis of Cloud Creek." He once studied under Chen Tuan, receiving the transmission of diagrammatic studies including the Xiantian tu, the Hetu, and the Luoshu, which he in turn passed on to Mu Xiu, Li Gai, and others, giving rise to the tradition later carried on by Shao Yong and Zhou Dunyi; he was thus the key transmitter linking Chen Tuan's studies of the Changes to Song-dynasty Neo-Confucianism. In the fifth year of the Xianping era of Emperor Zhenzong (1002) he was summoned to court and appointed Left Reminder and academician of the Zhaowen Guan; he thereafter traveled repeatedly between the court and the Zhongnan Mountains, eventually rising to Vice Minister of Works, and died in the eighth year of the Dazhong Xiangfu era (1015). Although not himself a Daoist priest, as a disciple of Chen Tuan and a transmitter of Daoist diagrammatic studies he holds an important place in the history of Daoist thought.

Contributions & Influence

• Received Chen Tuan's diagrammatic studies of the Changes and transmitted them to Mu Xiu and others, serving as the intermediary figure for the Neo-Confucian tradition of diagrammatic learning

Works

• Mengshu (lost)
• Siyu Shuo (lost)