Wang Chong

Also known as Zi Zhongren

Wang Chong, courtesy name Zhongren, came from Shangyu in Kuaiji and, by his own account in the Balanced Discourses (Lunheng), was born in 27. At the imperial academy in Luoyang he studied under Ban Biao and, too poor to buy books, read them on the booksellers' stalls, remembering them after one reading. He left a commandery post after repeated disputes and later briefly served the regional inspector Dong Qin. His Balanced Discourses, eighty-five chapters of which eighty-four survive, attack prophetic texts and the theory that Heaven reacts to human conduct, holding that the Way of Heaven acts of itself; he also wrote on nurturing life. His friend Xie Yiwu recommended him to Emperor Zhang, who summoned him, but he was too ill to go, and he died at home in the Yongyuan era. A note to the History of the Later Han says Cai Yong found the Lunheng in the south and kept it as a private source of conversation.