Late Ming loyalist and scholar from Yuyao who raised troops for the Prince of Lu, then wrote the Waiting for the Dawn critique of rulership and the Case Studies of Ming Confucians
Mural guide
Mural of the cultural record “Pingshu and Pinghua Storytelling”, which this person is tied to.
Huang Zongxi, courtesy name Taichong, styled Lizhou, of Yuyao, was the eldest son of the Donglin official Huang Zunsu, who died in the eunuch Wei Zhongxian's prison. When the Chongzhen Emperor came to the throne Huang went to the capital, stabbed the torturer Xu Xianchun with an awl hidden in his sleeve and hunted down the jailers who had killed his father. He then studied under Liu Zongzhou. After Nanjing fell he raised several hundred men to fight for the Prince of Lu; when resistance failed he took his mother home and turned to writing and teaching. He declined the special examination of 1678 and would not join the Ming History office, though his son Huang Baijia worked there and the historians consulted him. His works include Waiting for the Dawn (Mingyi daifang lu) and the Case Studies of Ming Confucians (Mingru xue'an), and he died in 1695 aged eighty-six. Gu Yanwu, reading Waiting for the Dawn, remarked that the order of the Three Dynasties could be restored.
Huang Zongxi writes the Mingru xue'an and Mingyi daifang lu
Late Ming and early Qing
Huang Zongxi's learning came from the Jishan school, where he took in the teaching of sincere intent and watchfulness when alone, and it was careful, plain and solid. He held that students must first study the classics thoroughly and must also read history, and he faulted Ming lecturers for copying the dregs of recorded sayings instead of grounding themselves in the Six Classics. He wrote the Mingru xue'an in sixty-two chapters and the Mingyi daifang lu in one, and late in life compiled the Song Yuan xue'an.
Ming
Qing
Literature · Prose