Fan Shengzhi

Fan Shengzhi lived under the Western Han. The bibliographic treatise of the History of the Han (Hanshu) lists a work of eighteen sections under his name among the agriculturalists, and Ban Gu notes that he was a court gentleman consultant under Emperor Cheng. Liu Xiang's catalogue, quoted in Yan Shigu's commentary, adds that he was sent to teach farming in the three districts around the capital, where landowners took him as their teacher, and that he was later promoted to the censorate. The book, later called the Book of Fan Shengzhi (Fan Shengzhi shu), is lost, but long passages survive in Jia Sixie's Northern Wei Essential Techniques for the Common People (Qimin yaoshu). It describes pit cultivation, in which small deep-dug plots receive concentrated manure and water, and a seed treatment that coats grain with bone broth and animal dung before sowing, and gives growing methods for each main crop. Qing scholars such as Hong Yixuan and Ma Guohan compiled reconstructions, and Shi Shenghan published an annotated edition in 1956.