Scholars › Philosopher / Thinker
Ye Shi
Southern Song thinker of the Yongjia school who defended the Yangzi line after the failed 1206 northern campaign and spent his last sixteen years writing at Shuixin
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 Zhengze · Hao Shuixin · Shuixin Xiansheng · Shi Wending
Ye Shi, courtesy name Zhengze, sobriquet Shuixin, came from Yongjia in Wenzhou and placed second in the jinshi examination of 1178. He served in the Imperial University and the Court of Sacrifices and in 1194 took part in the plan that put Emperor Ningzong on the throne. When Han Tuozhou launched his northern campaign in 1206 Ye had advised caution; after the Song armies failed he was sent to govern Jiankang and command along the Yangzi, where he built fortified villages north of the river and organised militia, keeping the Jin from pressing deeper. After Han was killed in 1207 Ye was impeached for having supported the war and stripped of office, and he spent sixteen years writing and teaching at Shuixin outside Yongjia. He held that moral principle must show itself in practical results; his late *Xixue jiyan xumu* weighs the classics, histories and philosophers. He died in 1223 at seventy-four, named Wending, and the *Records of Song and Yuan Scholars* gives his school a chapter of its own.
Life and times
Dates 1150 CE–1223 CE