Fan Pang

Also known as Zi Mengbo

Fan Pang, courtesy name Mengbo, came from Zhengqiang in Runan and was recommended for office for his integrity. When famine struck Ji province he was sent to investigate as a special commissioner, and the History of the Later Han (Hou Hanshu) says he took up the reins resolved to cleanse the realm, so that corrupt prefects and magistrates handed in their seals before he arrived. Arrested in the first Partisan Prohibition of 166, he was jailed, and on his release several thousand carriages of gentlemen from Runan and Nanyang came to meet him. In the great purge of 169 the local inspector sent to arrest him wept over the warrant, and Fan gave himself up; his mother told him that sharing the fame of Li Ying and Du Mi was worth dying for, and he died in prison at thirty-three. The History of Song records that the boy Su Shi, reading his biography, asked his mother whether she would let him be such a man.