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Song Yingxing
Fengxin scholar and minor official who wrote the Tiangong kaiwu, an illustrated account of Ming farming and crafts, and lived in retirement after the fall of the Ming
On an observatory terrace at night, a large bronze armillary sphere stands on a stone base while two people stand with their backs turned facing the view; stars are joined into constellation lines overhead, and a sundial and tiered dripping water vessels stand at the right.
Also known as Zi Changgeng
- Roles
- Scientist
Song Yingxing, courtesy name Changgeng, came from Fengxin in Jiangxi, passed the provincial examination in the same year as his elder brother Song Yingsheng, but failed the metropolitan examination several times. Under the Chongzhen emperor he served as instructor at the Fenyi county school, judge in Tingzhou in Fujian and magistrate of Bozhou, leaving office as the dynasty collapsed. At Fenyi he wrote The Works of Heaven and the Inception of Things (Tiangong kaiwu), printed in 1637, which in eighteen chapters and more than a hundred and twenty illustrations describes grain farming, weaving, salt, sugar, ceramics, metals, boats, paper and weapons. He also wrote essays on politics, on qi and on the heavens, and after the Qing conquest he lived in retirement, while his brother took his own life as the Southern Ming fell. The Tiangong kaiwu circulated little under the Qing, was left out of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, and was revived in modern times from a Japanese edition.
Life and times
Dates 1587 CE–c. 1666 CE