Scholars › Historian
Hu Wei
Deqing classicist who helped compile the Qing imperial geography, studied the Tribute of Yu and traced the River Chart diagrams to Daoist adepts rather than the Changes
In an archive hall, tall wooden shelves hold scrolls and bound books with small tags, and one person climbs a ladder with their back turned; a long table in front holds an unrolled river map, a bronze lamp and a copper jug, with a city wall seen through the window.
Also known as Zi Feiming · Hao Dongqiao
- Roles
- Historian
Hu Wei, originally named Weisheng, came from Deqing in Zhejiang and devoted himself to the classics and especially to geography. After tutoring in the household of the grand secretary Feng Pu, he joined Gu Zuyu, Yan Ruoqu and Huang Yi on Xu Qianxue's team for the imperial gazetteer of the Qing, working at Dongting Mountain. His Yugong zhuizhi, twenty chapters with forty-seven maps on the Tribute of Yu, corrected the geographical errors of Han and Tang commentators and traced every change in the course of the Yellow River. His Yitu mingbian argued that the River Chart, Luo Writing and other diagrams attached to the Book of Changes by Song scholars came from Daoist adepts and diviners, not from the makers of the classic. When the Kangxi emperor toured the south in 1704 Hu presented his book on the Tribute of Yu and received four characters in the emperor's hand praising his learning in old age. He died in 1714 at eighty-two.
Life and times
Dates 1633 CE–1714 CE