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Zhang Jian
Top graduate of the 1894 palace examination who returned home to Nantong to found the Dasheng cotton mill, a normal school and a museum, and later served as minister of agriculture and commerce
On a river quay, loaded camels rest before a warehouse of stacked bales, with a balance scale and abacus on a table and green ceramic jars in front; porters carry bundles toward a large sailing ship on the right, and blank banners hang at the warehouse.
Also known as Zi Jizhi · Hao Se'an
Zhang Jian, courtesy name Jizhi, sobriquet Se'an, came from Tongzhou, now Nantong, in Jiangsu. As a young man he served on the staff of Wu Changqing's Qing Army and went with it to Korea in 1882 during the Imo mutiny. He took first place in the special palace examination of 1894 and joined the Hanlin Academy, and the next year the Liangjiang governor-general Zhang Zhidong commissioned him to raise a cotton mill at Tongzhou. The Dasheng mill began spinning in 1899, followed by the Tonghai land reclamation company and other ventures; in 1902 he opened the Tongzhou Normal School and in 1905 the Nantong Museum. Elected chairman of the Jiangsu provincial assembly in 1909, he served after 1912 as minister of industry in the Nanjing provisional government and then as minister of agriculture and commerce and head of the national water conservancy bureau in Beijing. He died at Nantong in 1926; his museum is counted among the earliest public museums founded by Chinese.
Life and times
Dates 1853 CE–1926 CE