MUZIChinese Matrix
Scholars › Philosopher / Thinker
Northern Song Confucian thinker who with his brother Cheng Hao founded the Luo school, tutored the boy emperor Zhezong and wrote the Yichuan Commentary on the Changes
A thatched pavilion open on three sides stands among tall bamboo; one person sits with their back turned at the veranda rail beside a zither and a stack of bamboo slips, while a stone path runs to a calm pond reflecting clouds and distant hills.
Also known as Zi Zhengshu · Yichuan Xiansheng · Henan Chengshi · Zheng
Cheng Yi, courtesy name Zhengshu, came from Luoyang and as a boy studied with his elder brother Cheng Hao under Zhou Dunyi. At eighteen he submitted a memorial to Emperor Renzong as a commoner, and at the Imperial Academy an essay of his so impressed Hu Yuan that he gave him a teaching post. In 1086, on the recommendation of Sima Guang and Lu Gongzhu, he became lecturer to the boy emperor Zhezong, and his rigid insistence on ritual set him against Su Shi's circle, splitting the court into Luo and Shu factions. In the Shaosheng era he was blacklisted with the Yuanyou partisans and banished to Fuzhou in Sichuan; pardoned under Huizong and proscribed again, he died in 1107. His Commentary on the Changes is his main work, and in 1220 he was given the posthumous name Zheng. The History of Song (Songshi) tells how Yang Shi and You Zuo waited at his door while he dozed until the snow outside lay a foot deep.
Dates 1033 CE–1107 CE
The Song History says Cheng Yi taught tirelessly all his life and that more scholars came from his school than any other; his learning was based on sincerity, took the Great Learning, Analects, Mencius and Doctrine of the Mean as its guide and reached the Six Classics. He was ordered to be professor at the Western Capital Academy, which he firmly declined, and was later summoned as proofreader and raised to lecturer at the Chongzheng hall.