Wu Jingzi

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Wu Jingzi
Simplified:
Traditional:
Hanyu Pinyin: Wú Jìngzǐ

Wu Ching-tzu (or Wu Ching-tse) was a Chinese writer born in 1701 in Quanjiao (全椒; Ch'uan-chiao) County in eastern Anhui (Anhwei) Provence. He died on 12 December 1754 in Yangzhou (Yang-Chou) in Jiangsu (Chiang-su) Province.

Wu was born into a well-to-do family (his father was a Qing Official), but met no success himself. He attempted the Imperial Civil Exam, but placed only at the county level. Poverty stricken by the age of 32, he moved to Nanjing (Nanking), where he met and acquainted himself with many government officials/scholars.

Wu's family may have had ties to the famous philosophers Yan Yuan and Li Gong. The philosophers emphasized the importance of ritual in Neo-Confucianism and may have influenced Wu's novel.[1]

While in Nanjing, in 1740, he started his famous novel Ru Lin Wai Shi (The Scholars). There is a museum in his honor located in his hometown of Quanjiao, near Chuzhou.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Ellen Widmer (1999). "Review of Literati Identity and Its Fictional Representations in Late Imperial China". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 59 (1). 
  • Encyclopædia Britannica 2005 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, article- "Wu Ching-tzu"

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