Zuo Guangdou

Also known as Zi Yizhi · Hao Fuqiu

Zuo Guangdou, courtesy name Yizhi, came from Tongcheng and passed the metropolitan examination in 1607. As a censor in the capital he uncovered more than seventy forged seals and over a hundred bogus officials. Put in charge of military farms, he drew up a programme of water works, and the History of Ming (Mingshi) says northerners learned to grow rice as a result. When the Taichang emperor died in 1620 and Consort Li occupied the Qianqing Palace, he and Yang Lian forced her out. Made a vice censor-in-chief in 1624, he joined Yang Lian's impeachment of the eunuch Wei Zhongxian and drafted charges of thirty-two capital crimes, but was dismissed before submitting them. The following year he was falsely accused of taking bribes from Yang Hao and Xiong Tingbi, jailed and tortured to death on the same day as Yang Lian, in his fifty-first year. After Wei's fall he was rehabilitated, and Fang Bao's sketch of him recounts his student Shi Kefa slipping into the prison to see him.