Bi Yuan

Also known as Zi Xiangheng · Hao Qiufan · Hao Lingyan Shanren

Bi Yuan, courtesy name Xiangheng, styled Qiufan and calling himself the Hermit of Lingyan Hill, came from Zhenyang, present-day Taicang in Jiangsu. He took first place in the palace examination of 1760 and entered the Hanlin Academy, and from 1770 served as acting and then full governor of Shaanxi, where he compiled an illustrated gazetteer of the region's historic sites, Guanzhong shengji tuzhi. In 1788 he became governor-general of Huguang, a post he held for most of his remaining years apart from a spell of demotion to the Shandong governorship. Scholars on his staff, among them Shao Jinhan and Qian Daxin, helped him produce the 220-chapter Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror (Xu Zizhi tongjian), which carries the chronicle through the Song, Liao, Jin and Yuan. He died in 1797 at his army camp in Chenzhou, Hunan, received no posthumous name, and two years later was stripped of his hereditary rank for failing to check the White Lotus rising in Hubei.