Scholars › Philosopher / Thinker
Zhang Taiyan
Classical scholar and revolutionary jailed in the 1903 Subao case who edited the Minbao in Tokyo and spent his last years teaching national learning in Suzhou
A thatched pavilion open on three sides stands among tall bamboo; one person sits with their back turned at the veranda rail beside a zither and a stack of bamboo slips, while a stone path runs to a calm pond reflecting clouds and distant hills.
Also known as Ming Binglin · Zi Meishu
Zhang Taiyan, given name Binglin, courtesy name Meishu, came from Yuhang in Zhejiang and was born in January 1869. He spent some seven or eight years studying the classics under Yu Yue at the Gujing Jingshe academy in Hangzhou, cut off his queue in 1900 as a break with the Qing, and the same year published his essays as Qiushu. In 1903 his open letter refuting Kang Youwei's case against revolution appeared in the Shanghai paper Subao, along with his preface to Zou Rong's The Revolutionary Army, and he was arrested and jailed for three years in what became the Subao case. Released in 1906, he went to Japan, joined the Revolutionary Alliance and edited its organ Minbao, and wrote works on philology and national learning such as Guogu lunheng and Xin fangyan. In the early Republic Yuan Shikai held him under house arrest in Beijing; in his last years he ran a school of national learning in Suzhou, where he died in June 1936.
Life and times
Dates 1869 CE–1936 CE