Gao Panlong

Also known as Zi Cunzhi · Hao Jingyi · Zhongxian (posthumous name) · Zi Yuncong

Gao Panlong, courtesy name Cunzhi, sobriquet Jingyi, was a Wuxi native who passed the palace examination in 1589. With Gu Xiancheng he revived the Donglin Academy, and his rigorous practice made him a leading Confucian of his day, the pair being spoken of together as Gao and Gu. Under the Tianqi Emperor he rose to Chief Censor and exposed the corrupt censor Cui Chengxiu, who then joined Wei Zhongxian and had Gao stripped of rank. In 1626, when imperial guards came to arrest him, he left a memorial saying that a minister's humiliation shames the state, put on his court dress and drowned himself in a pond, aged sixty-five by Chinese reckoning. He was posthumously honoured as Zhongxian under Chongzhen, a Donglin leader who died in the purge.