Yan Hui

Also known as Yan Yuan · Zi Yuan · Fu Sheng

Yan Hui, courtesy name Ziyuan, also called Yan Yuan, was a man of Lu who, according to the Records of the Grand Historian, was thirty years younger than Confucius; his father Yan Lu was also a disciple. The Analects has Confucius praise him for keeping his joy on a bowl of rice and a gourd of water in a mean lane, and for loving learning, never shifting his anger or repeating a fault. When the master's party was menaced at Kuang and Yan Hui arrived late, Confucius said he had feared him dead; Yan replied that while the master lived he would not dare to die. The Shiji says his hair was white at twenty-nine and that he died young, and the Analects tells how Confucius wept without restraint and cried that Heaven had destroyed him. The same book lists him first for virtuous conduct. The Yuan made him Duke of Yan, Restorer Sage, in 1330, and the Ming renamed him Master Yan the Restorer Sage in 1530.