General Information（7）

Notable people

Statesmen

Fan Zhongyan (989–1052), was a prominent politician and literary figure in Song dynasty China. He was also a strategist and educator. After serving the central government of the state for many years he finally rose to the seat of chancellor over the whole of the Chinese empire.
Yen Chia-kan (October 23, 1905 – December 24, 1993), better known as C. K. Yen, succeeded Chiang Kai-shek as President of the Republic of China upon Chiang's death on April 5, 1975. He served out the remainder of Chiang's term until May 20, 1978.

Poets

Bai Juyi (772–846) was a Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty. His poems mostly concern his responsibilities as governor of several small provinces. He is also renowned in Japan (where his name is read Hakkyo'i, はく きょい).

Fan Chengda (1126-1193 AD) was one of the best-known Chinese poets of the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD), a government official, and an academic authority in geography , especially the southern provinces of China. His written work also falls under the literary category of 'travel record literature' (youji wenxue), a narrative and prose style approach to writing about one's travel experiences, which was popular in China during the Song Dynasty.

Playwrights

Feng Menglong (1574-1645 AD) was a Chinese vernacular writer/poet of the late Ming Dynasty. Most of his literary work was in editing and compiling histories, almanacs, novels, etcetera. Two noteworthy novels of his are Pingyao Zhuan and Qing Shi. Another of his novels has recently drawn more attention and turned into a TV show is Dongzhou Lieguo Zhi (Romance of Eastern Zhou Kingdoms). In 1620 he published the Gujin Xiaoshuo ("Stories Old and New").

Painters

Tang Yin (1470-1524), better known by his courtesy name Tang Bohu, was a Chinese scholar, painter, calligrapher, and poet of the Ming Dynasty period whose life story has become a part of popular lore. He is one of the painting elite “the Four Masters of Ming Dynasty” (Ming Si Jia), Tang is also a talented poet.

Wen Zhengming (1470–1559) was a leading Ming Dynasty painter, calligrapher, and scholar. Wen often chose painting subjects of great simplicity, like a single tree or rock. His work often brings about a feeling of strength through isolation, which often reflected his discontent with official life. Many of his works also celebrate the contexts of elite social life for which they were created. He collaborated in the design of the Humble Administrator's Garden, generally considered one of China's four greatest gardens.

Physicists

Tsung-Dao Lee (born November 24, 1926) is a Chinese-born American physicist, well known for his work on parity violation, the Lee Model, particle physics, relativistic heavy ion (RHIC) physics, nontopological solitons and soliton stars. In 1957, Lee, at the age of 30 (with C. N. Yang) won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on the violation of parity law in weak interaction, which Chien-Shiung Wu experimentally verified. Lee is the second youngest Nobel laureate, after W. L. Bragg who won the prize at the age of 25, with his father W. H. Bragg in 1915. Lee and Yang were the first Chinese Laureates. Since naturalized as American citizen in 1962, Lee thus is also the youngest American who has ever won a Nobel Prize.

Chien-Shiung Wu (May 31, 1912 – February 16, 1997) was a Chinese-American physicist with an expertise in the techniques of experimental physics and radioactivity. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project (in the process for enriching the uranium into the U-235 fissile metal), and performed very early experiments that contradicted the hypothetical "Law of Conservation of Parity". Her honorific nicknames included the "First Lady of Physics", the "Chinese Marie Curie", and "Madame Wu". She died after suffering her second stroke on February 16, 1997, at the age of 84.)

Philosophers

Gu Yanwu (1613 - 1682), was a Chinese philologist and geographer. He spent his youth in anti-Manchu activities at a time when the Ming Dynasty had been overthrown. He never served the Qing Dynasty. Instead, he traveled throughout the country and devoted himself to studies. Gu divided the rhymes of Old Chinese into 10 groups, the first one to do so. His positivist approach to a variety of disciplines, and his criticism of Neo-Confucianism had a huge influence on later scholars.
Zhang Taiyan (December 25, 1868 — June 14, 1936) was a Chinese philologist, textual critic and anti-Manchu revolutionary. An activist as well as a scholar, he produced a great amount of political works. Because of his outspoken character, he was jailed for three years by the Qing Empire and put under house arrest for another three by Yuan Shikai.