Zhou Lianggong

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Zhou Lianggong or Chou Liang-kung (1612 – 1672), Chinese poet, essayist and art historian, had long family ties to Nanking, where he was born. He passed his chin-shih degree in 1640, becoming a magistrate in Shantung where he defended the city from attack from Manchu soldiers. He would however take his place in the new Manchu regime in a variety of official capacities. In 1655, he was accused of official corruption and finally faced imprisonment. There he edited his poetry collection (Lai-ku t’ang shih). Chou was eventually granted amnesty in 1661. He was accused again of corruption in 1669. He sentence was hanging, but was again given amnesty. Late in life, he destroyed many of his writings, but fortunately not of his many associates, whose work he shaped and edited. Among his surviving works is a collection of jottings (Yin-shu wu shu-ying), a work he compiled in prison, and a remarkable collection of letters, Ch'ih-tu hsin-ch’ao. The collection of letters was a democratic undertaking. Many of the collected letters are by those who performed the compilation. In a real sense, Chou was chief editor. In the immediate years after his death, Chou was considered a writer of the first rank. By the 18th century, he and other writers who had served two dynasties were then considered of a lower level. In the late 1700s, his works were considered anathema by the ruling monarch.

BOOKS

Kim, Hongnam., The Life of a Patron, China Institute, 1996.

ARTICLES

• Hummel, Arthur W., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, Washington, 1943, pp. 173-174.
• Carpenter, Bruce E., ‘A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Anothology of Letters’, Tezukayama University Review (Tezukayama daigaku ronshū), Nara, Japan, 1990, no. 69, pp. 176-190).
• Carpenter, Bruce E., Chou Liang-kung’s Shadows of Reading’, Tezukayama University Review (Tezukayama daigaku ronshū ), Nara, Japan, 1988, no. 62, pp. 35-43.