Ruan Yuan
Ruan Yuan (Chinese: 阮元 1764–1849), was a scholar official of the Qing Dynasty in Imperial China. He won jinshi (high) honors in the imperial examinations in 1789 and was subsequently appointed to the Hanlin Academy. He was known for his work Biographies of Astronomers and Mathematicians and for his editing the Shi san jing zhu shu (Commentaries and Notes on the Thirteen Classics) for the Qing emperor.
Ruan Yuan was a successful official as well as a scholar. He was the governor, the most important imperial official, of Guangdong province during the critical years 1817–1826, just before the First Opium War with Britain. It was a critical time when Chinese trade with the outside world was allowed only through the Canton System, with all foreigners confined to Guangzhou (Canton), the capital of Guangdong.
Ruan Yuan was widely recognized as an official, scholar, and patron of learning both by his contemporaries and by modern scholars. He was also praised as an honest official and an exemplary man of the ‘Confucian persuasion’. His name is mentioned in almost all works on Qing history or Chinese classics because of the wide range of his research and publications. A number of these publications are still being reprinted today. Ruan Yuan was a follower of the Han Learning tradition. As such, with encouragement of Liu Fenglu, he edited and organized publication of the compendium of the imperial achievements in the kaozheng scholarship, Huang Qing jingjie (zh:皇清经解), 1829.
References
Bibliography
- Betty Peh-T'i Wei (2006). Ruan Yuan, 1764–1849: The Life And Work of a Major Scholar-Official in Nineteenth-Century China Before the Opium War. Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press. ISBN 962-209-785-5.
- Miles, Steven B. (2006). "Establishing authority through scholarship: Ruan Yuan and the Xuehaitang Academy". In Hershock, Peter D. Confucian Cultures of Authority. SUNY Press. pp. 151–169. ISBN 978-0-7914-8156-1.
- Miles, Steven B. (2006). The Sea of Learning: Mobility and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Guangzhou. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02134-1.