{xii} Introduction

In most general studies of Neo-Confucianism, the focus tends to be on the leading thinkers of the Song (960–1279) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties, such as the Cheng brothers (Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi), Zhu Xi, and Wang Yangming. The dominant emphasis for these major figures is their key philosophical ideas as expressed in their various writings. Except for some personal accounts of Wang Yangming, readers seldom get a glimpse of how scholars struggled with putting their ideas into practice, as there are few extended firsthand accounts of anyone engaged in the daily pursuit of the Neo-Confucian goal of sagehood.

One of the few examples is the Neo-Confucian Wu Yubi (1392–1469) who lived in the early Ming dynasty. He kept a diary that chronicled his pursuit of sagehood, detailing its ups and downs and his progress and backsliding in over 300 entries. His Journal is considered a rare instance of confessional literature in China before the sixteenth century when that genre became the rage. One expert on Chinese autobiographical writing, Pei-yi Wu, attributes the paucity of self-revelatory writing in China before the sixteenth century to the “general inhibition against writing about one’s inner life for a public audience” on the part of Confucians. He notes that many Song figures kept diaries, but that they “were nothing more than logbooks of external activities, receptacles of reading notes and anecdotes. For any record of self-examination and self-cultivation, we have to wait until early Ming when Wu Yü-pi wrote what might be described as a subjective diary.”¹

Wu spent most of his life in Jiangxi province, away from the centers of cultural and political activity, engaged in a life of farming and teaching. One of the prime motivations for his keeping a diary stemmed from an earlier experience as a teenager while studying for the civil service exams in {xiii} the capital, Nanjing, where his father held a high position at the National University. While reading a book that might be called a kind of “lives of the Song dynasty Neo-Confucian saints,” Wu was seized with an urgency to become a sage just like them. He gave up his academic studies, which would have led to a career as an official, in order to concentrate on the study of the Song masters that would help him realize his own sagehood. His father, enraged at his son’s decision, sent him back to the family farm and disowned him. Wu’s immediate self-righteousness and fervor soon faded once he was home. With no outer evil to protest, he was faced with the struggle within himself, forced to face his own wayward nature.

Wu floundered for ten years, never, however, giving up the cause. He was finally reconciled with his father, and then, several years later, turned to the practice of keeping a written record of his efforts in the form of a journal. He used it for a variety of reasons but mostly to keep track of his behavior, his progress and his setbacks, his highs and lows. And highs and lows there were. Wu reveals himself to be a high-strung, at times overly emotional person, whose moods shift between darkness and light, depending on his behavior and external circumstances. Wu shared the tendency of many idealists, that is, impatience with the shortcomings of others and, even more so, himself. Judging by the change in tone over the course of the Journal as he aged, the cycling back and forth between moods modulated with time. The Journal, although it did not make him a sage on the level of the Song Neo-Confucians and Confucius, nevertheless contributed to his sense of deeper involvement with life. It wasn’t that he ceased having dark moments but that they became less frequent and less intense.

What emerges from the reading of the Journal is the picture of a fascinating Neo-Confucian personality with a lifestyle that was more devotional, confessional, and nature-oriented than we usually associate with Neo-Confucians. As Wu became well known as a teacher in his home province of Jiangxi, he attracted more and more students from a wide range of backgrounds who came to study under him. Among them were three of the leading Confucian thinkers of the next generation, Lou Liang, Hu Juren, and Chen Xianzhang. Students attributed his attraction as a teacher to his skill at opening up students to the material and making his teachings clear, but part of the attraction lay in his frank admission of his own difficulties. In Wu, students found someone who affirmed that their own struggles were not something indicating a defect on their part but were an expected part of the pursuit. He did not present himself as a more {xiv} accomplished practitioner with quick answers, as the Song Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi had. As Wu’s fame grew, he was invited to court to be an advisor to the throne, but he declined. He spent the rest of his life as a teacher, dying at the age of seventy-seven.

Wu was not an intellectual figure of the same heft as the Neo-Confucian masters Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming. He made no contributions to Neo-Confucianism in the areas of philosophy, statecraft, scholarship, or literature. And yet, despite the low-key, unobtrusive, quiet way he went about his practice and teachings, he was chosen by the early-Qing historian of Ming thought, Huang Zongxi (1610–1695), as the first major figure of the Ming in his groundbreaking anthology, Case Studies of Ming Confucians: “Just as the Imperial Chariot had its origins in the oxcart, and thick ice comes about by an accumulation of water, so Ming thought could not have flourished without Wu Yubi.”2 Huang saw Wu as the one who provided the link to the transmission of the Confucian Way from the Song to the Ming dynasties, and as someone who merited consideration for his achievements as a teacher.

Brief Introduction to Neo-Confucianism and to the Ming Dynasty

When we speak of Neo-Confucianism³ we are referring to the revival in the Song dynasty of the classical Confucian tradition, which had been superseded in influence—though never entirely replaced—by Buddhism and Daoism from the third to the tenth century. The revival was led by {xv} a newly emerging class of literati, a group brimming with talent, energy, idealism, and self-confidence. Partly as a result of the strong challenges posed by Buddhism and partly of the changing political situation in which this new class had emerged, these men sought to reassert the Confucian Dao or Way, a new Confucianism, or, as it has come to be known in the West, Neo-Confucianism. For them, the articulation of this Way had to be broad and comprehensive enough both to answer the competing claims of Buddhism, and also to support the grand enterprise of building a new society they envisioned. It had to be a Way that successfully integrated the social, political, intellectual, cultural, and religious concerns of the human. Over and against the Buddhist notions that this world is illusory and the source of all suffering, it had to assert the reality of this world, especially human society, and the validity of human efforts to build up that society.

The Way that they articulated was that of a cosmic organism, essentially one in nature, in which the heavenly, the natural, and the human realms cohere and are identified with each other. This oneness was spoken of as li , or principle, when referring to its aspects of rationality, order, and harmony; and as ren , humaneness or benevolence, when referring to its affective life-giving and life-connecting qualities. The cosmic Way, like the human mind, is both rational and affective, principle and love, perfect objectivity and perfect subjectivity. Thus a Neo-Confucian would proclaim: “Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother, and even such a small creature as I finds an intimate place in their midst. Therefore that which fills the universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I consider as my nature. All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions.”4

Corresponding to the reassertion of an all-embracing Way was a new sense of the human person and his role in this Way. Reflecting the great optimism and self-confidence of the new literati class, the human person was seen as having a key role in the proper functioning of the Way: he was no less than a partner with Heaven and earth, no less than a sage. All human beings have the potential for sagehood. Sagehood is what describes the fullest identity of what it means to be human; it is what every person has the innate capacity for, what every person is called to be. The human person has the capacity for sagehood because his mind has been bestowed {xvi} by Heaven and earth, and shares in their fundamental rationality and life-giving creativity. The human mind is the source of a person’s power to know the oneness of his own being and that of the cosmos, as well as to effect that oneness in the human society around him.

Sagehood was not just a personal matter of the individual but had broad implications for the well-ordered and just society these men sought to bring about. Borrowing a passage from the classical text the Great Learning, they insisted that, “From the Son of Heaven (ruler) down to the common people, every single one should regard cultivating the self as the foundation.” Even the emperor must regard the pursuit of sagehood and the self-discipline that it entails as his personal responsibility.

In their formulation of these ideas, Neo-Confucians borrowed a good deal from Buddhism, even as they criticized Buddhism and denied any such borrowings. This was especially so in the areas of meditation and metaphysics. In effect, they argued, these ideas had been part of Confucianism all along. The Way is the Way because it is eternal, it operates in all times and in all situations. Just look at the sages and the classical writings of the past, they said. The problem was that the Way has not been transmitted, as it should have been, since the time of the philosopher Mencius (372–289 BCE). Buddhists and Daoists had fooled the people for a long time. But right here and now, they asserted, we can revive it by going back to the sage models of the past and the perennial truths of the written word found in the classics.

So to underscore these assertions, they presented a version of Chinese history that emphasized what they called the “transmission of the Way” (daotong ) that went like this. Back in ancient times, the sage rulers like Yao and Shun embodied the Way and started benevolent government, ruling wisely and kindly, making sure the people were educated and well-taken care of. The Way revolved around human relationships and the moral conduct appropriate to each. Yao, around 2300 BCE, transmitted this Way to the next ruler, Shun, and Shun to Yu, who became ruler of the first dynasty, the Xia (c.2205–c.1766 BCE). When that dynasty descended into chaos and misrule, King Tang (c.1675–1646 BCE) founded the Shang dynasty and was able to regain the Way; when the Shang was conquered by Kings Wen and Wu of the Zhou (c.11th century BCE), the same thing happened. When the Zhou fell into chaos and seemed to have lost the Way, Confucius (551–479 BCE) came along and did all he could to revitalize it. He had a strong sense of mission to keep alive the work of King {xvii} Wen, as seen in this passage from the Analects: “The Master was surrounded in Kuang. He said, ‘Now that King Wen is gone, is not culture (wen) now invested here in me? If Heaven intended this culture to perish, it would not have given it to those of us who live after King Wen’s death. Since Heaven did not intend that this culture should perish, what can the people of Kuang do to me?’”5 After his death, as the Zhou descended into further bloodshed and fighting, Mencius took up where Confucius left off, traveling around to different feudal lords to get them to adopt Confucian measures for humane government in the spirit of Yao, Shun, and Confucius. The very last passage of the Mencius text ends with a question: “Is there indeed no one? Again, indeed is there no one?”⁶ Commentators are not all in agreement about what exactly Mencius meant here, but the Song Neo-Confucians took it as both a question and a challenge about the transmission of the Confucian Way.

For them, although there were Confucians who tried to practice the Way after Mencius, their efforts were insufficient and the harm done by Buddhism and Daoism too great. They felt called to embrace Mencius’ challenge, even though reviving the “real” Way and guaranteeing its pivotal place in society were arduous struggles of epic proportions. Since the amount of time passed had been so long—a thousand years—they were up against great odds. They felt they were up to the task, but doing so would be the stuff of heroes.

The principal architects of the Cheng-Zhu tradition⁷ in the early Song were Zhou Dunyi (1017–1073), Zhang Zai (1020–1077), Shao Yong (1011–1077), Cheng Hao (1032–1085), and Cheng Yi (1033–1107). The last two made the greatest contributions in the area of thought. It was Zhu Xi (1130–1200) in the Southern Song who pulled together the various strands of these thinkers’ ideas and shaped a comprehensive, multifaceted philosophy of life. He threw himself into a wide range of writing projects to spread these teachings: commentaries on almost all of the classics, reordering the content of some of the classics, editing collections of sayings and biographies of earlier Confucians, devising curriculums of study, and composing {xviii} guidelines for private academies, among other things. He ran afoul of court politics late in his life, and his teachings were proscribed. He died without knowing that his writings would become the basis of all Chinese education and the civil service examination system from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century.

It was the Mongols who conquered Song China and ruled as the Yuan dynasty,8 who first adopted Zhu Xi’s writings. Its founder, Kublai Khan (1215–1294), made use of Neo-Confucian advisors at court. Although he toyed with the idea of reinstituting the civil service examination system, he never did. One of his successors did in 1313 and the required content of the exams was the Four Books⁹ and Zhu Xi’s commentaries on them. It would be the following Ming dynasty when the Cheng-Zhu school of Neo-Confucianism would take root, from the emperor himself down to the lowest class of people.

The Ming dynasty (1368–1644) was the last dynasty to be ruled by native Chinese, sandwiched between the Yuan dynasty when the Mongols ruled and the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) when the Manchus ruled. It lacked the grandeur of the great Han and Tang dynasties in terms of empire and wealth, but it had its own distinctive flavor. It was one of the more colorful dynasties and exuded a modern energy. It was a period that saw grand ocean expeditions that went as far as east Africa, an expansion in the production of exquisite Ming porcelains, the building of the Great Wall, and the rise of a wealthy merchant class. It was the great age in book publishing, responding to the insatiable demand for books, especially those with color illustrations. In the areas of religion and literature, it witnessed a great celebration of the “self” and human emotions.

Its founder was Zhu Yuanchang (1328–1398), one of the most colorful emperors in Chinese history. Rising from extreme obscurity and poverty to power, he was one of only two emperors who came from the peasant class, the other being the founder of the Han dynasty, Liu Bang. Orphaned as a child, Zhu spent part of his childhood in a Buddhist monastery and rose to power as a participant and then leader of the messianic, anti-dynastic White Lotus rebellions of the 1350s. In 1368, he declared himself emperor {xix} of all of China, calling his dynasty the Ming , or “bright,” dynasty. Known by his temple name, Ming Taizu , he fully embraced the cosmic identity of the role of emperor, the appointed Son of Heaven, who was invested with both secular and sacred responsibilities. More than most founding emperors, he drew heavily upon this status to articulate a new state ideology that effectively legitimized and enshrined his absolute power. He made use of Neo-Confucianism for its public philosophy as well as its institutional framework of schools and the examination system. To his credit, he was a conscientious administrator and did much to alleviate the suffering of the peasants.

For Confucians, there was one major problem. The all-important relationship between ruler and minister, which required a sense of respect and reciprocity on both sides, was not honored. Taizu discarded this relationship insofar as he felt himself to be beyond the demands of reciprocity, accountable to no one. This was most dramatically demonstrated in 1380 when he abolished the whole upper-echelon of the central government, including the prime ministership. He, in effect, became the government. Besides diminishing the power of ministers, Taizu set in motion dynamics of force and terror that once unleashed were never checked throughout the dynasty, including the public humiliation of officials, court beatings, secret police, and purges of officials numbering in the thousands. He visited his cruelty indiscriminately. Few of his advisors enjoyed a natural death. Even the military men who had risen with him to power and to whom he had shown special favors early in his reign were in the end subject to his wrath.

Taizu’s death in 1398 created new problems. Early in his reign, he had appointed his eldest son to be his successor. But this son died six years before Taizu did. Operating on the premise that the line of succession must proceed from one generation to the next, he chose his grandson, the oldest son of his oldest son rather than any of his living sons, to succeed him. When he died, his grandson took office as the Jianwen emperor, something Taizu’s oldest living son Zhu Di (1360–1424) greatly resented. Under the influence of Confucian advisors, the new emperor tried to move away from the harshness of his grandfather’s rule, but his attempts were cut short by the usurpation of the throne by Zhu Di, who installed himself as the Yongle emperor. Following his seizure of power, he had the court scholars rewrite the official court records to fit his account that he was the true heir to the throne. In his reaction to scholars who protested his actions, he proved himself as heavy-handed as his father in their widespread execution. Eager {xx} to win over other scholars, he sponsored several large scholarly compilations that he hoped showed himself to be a patron of Neo-Confucianism. As we shall see, Neo-Confucians such as Wu Yubi were faced with the moral issues posed by these two Ming emperors who presented themselves as Confucian sage rulers but whose actions belied their claims.

The Life of Wu Yubi¹⁰

Wu Yubi was born on January 6, 1392, in Fuzhou prefecture, Jiangxi province in central China. It was an area with a strong tradition of Neo-Confucian learning, dating from the days when Zhu Xi’s disciple and son-in-law, Huang Gan (1152–1221), served as magistrate there. Wu Cheng, the most important Neo-Confucian during the period of Mongol rule, (1249–1333) who lived in this area, noted its tradition of Neo-Confucian learning in a piece entitled, “Record of the Learning of Linchuan County.”

Wu Yubi’s family proudly traced its identity as Confucian several generations back. Wu’s great-great-grandfather was a literary man whose collection of poetry was given a preface by the renowned Wu Cheng. His grandfather moved the family to Chongren county, the next county to the southeast, because the family’s fortunes had fallen. It was this grandfather, according to Wu Yubi’s Biographical Account, who, the night before Wu’s birth, dreamed of a vine winding up and around the ancestral graves. When he asked an old man standing near the graves what kind of vine it was, he was told it was “pulling-the-official cart” vine, an allusion to a person who achieves high official rank in government. When Wu Yubi was born the following day, his grandfather gave him the name of Mengxiang ( ) (“Auspicious Dream”), thinking the dream meant that the boy would become a great official. Later this name was changed to Yubi ( ), meaning “one who concerns himself with helping and guiding {xxi} others.”11 In actual fact, Wu never did become an official; indeed, in his late teens he made a dramatic gesture of rejecting that option. Instead, he became a noted teacher and, not incidentally, a great dreamer of dreams himself.

Although this grandfather did not serve in government, his son and Wu’s father, Wu Pu (1363–1426),¹² not only served in office but did so successfully as a high government official in the capital, Nanjing. In 1390, two years before Wu Yubi’s birth, Wu Pu was recommended as an examination candidate from Jiangxi province to go to the capital to study for the highest level of the civil service examination. Illness kept him from being able to take advantage of the opportunity. It was three years after Wu’s birth, in 1395, that Wu Pu finally was able to go to Nanjing and enroll as a student at the National University, leaving his wife and three children (two daughters and a son) with his wife’s family. Wu Yubi’s emotional ties remained with his mother’s family long after this. Wu Pu won quick notoriety when, in 1400, five years later, he passed first in the metropolitan examinations and fourth in the jinshi examination (highest degree possible), two impressive accomplishments that guaranteed him a successful government career right there in the capital at China’s power center rather than out in the provinces. His first assignment was as a compiler in the Hanlin Academy, a group of elite scholars that served the emperor for secretarial and scholarly projects. After the usurpation of and then accession to the throne of the Yongle emperor in 1402, Wu’s father took part in the rewriting of the imperial annals of the Jianwen reign that, in effect, rewrote the history of the past four years. Later, in 1405, he was promoted to work as one of the assistant editors of the Great Encyclopedia of the Yongle Era.

Wu Pu’s successes continued when, in 1408, he was appointed to the prestigious position of Director of Studies of the National University by its chancellor, Hu Yan (1361–1443). When the position came open, the emperor is said to have stressed the importance of the position and urged Hu Yan to choose a person whose learning and practice would prove {xxii} exemplary to students. When Wu Pu took over the position, it is said that he restored a seriousness and dedication to the job that his immediate predecessors had not given it. In contrast to those who had only showed up for work every now and then, and had not seriously taught or examined the students on their progress, Wu Pu was there each day from early morning, “sitting in a dignified posture without any unbecoming comportment. The various students all had great respect for him and gave their hearts to him.”13 In his lectures, he not only sought to explain the principles of things but also to encourage a questioning attitude that would lead to self-reflection and self-appropriation of the material on the part of the student. Wu Pu would remain Director of Studies for eighteen years, until his death in 1426.

In 1402, after having passed his exams and gained an official position, Wu Pu sent for his son, Yubi, to come to Nanjing to live with him. Wu Yubi, by Western reckoning, was ten at the time.¹⁴ The Nanjing that he came to was not a city of peace and tranquility—just the opposite. As discussed earlier, a civil war had raged there between 1400 and 1402, when the uncle of the reigning emperor rebelled in an attempt to usurp the throne. With his success in doing so, he proclaimed himself the Yongle emperor, the emperor of “lasting peace.” But he was vengeful in victory, carrying out bloody purges of those Confucian scholar-officials who protested his usurpation of power and who defiantly asserted that his rule was illegitimate. Aware of the need not to alienate the whole Confucian community but rather to enlist their support to overcome the shadow of illegitimacy, Yongle cast himself in the role of patron of Confucianism by sponsoring large scholarly projects, involving the compilation of authoritative editions of Confucian classics. These big projects, he reasoned, would keep scholars too busy to criticize him. This divided Confucians among themselves: Could one in good conscience serve this emperor or not? This was to be a hot issue that divided Wu Yubi and his father, who was part of the inner circle that worked for Yongle.

{xxiii} With Nanjing astir with controversy, Wu Pu must have been anxious to start taking a more active role in his son’s education to pick such a time to have his brother, Wu Chongxue, escort his son to the capital to live with him. He had high hopes for his son in terms of his future career prospects, but he was just as concerned to be personally involved in his son’s moral formation. When Yubi was much younger, his father had written him this poem when he was leaving for Nanjing in 1395.

You, Mengxiang, are just now five years old,15

And already know how to recite passages from poetry and literature.

Though affection among brothers is important,

Teacher-student decorum must be strict.

Engaging in study requires that one be intimately involved.

The path can have no circuitous ways.

Hence, if you can be diligent in your learning,

In the end, you should become a noble Confucian.¹⁶

When Yubi and his father were first reunited, according to Yubi’s account, it was highly emotional for both father and son in that neither recognized the other at first.

It was only when I was twelve years old that Uncle took me to the capital to be with you. But you and I, father and son, didn’t recognize each other at first. During the time I lived in the capital, you once told me at night in bed, “In the past, while I was away from home, I often thought of you, but not being able to see you, I was moved to shed many tears. Now that you are here with me, you must exert your efforts to advance in your learning, striving to become a mature and accomplished person.” (CW 8:13a, Letter 1)

Soon after his arrival in Nanjing, Wu Yubi got word of his mother’s death. Having spent much time with his mother’s side of the family after {xxiv} his father left for the capital, he was much more emotionally attached to that side of the family. It grieved him that he was not able to see his mother’s grave until his return home much later. He remained close to his maternal grandmother, who outlived his mother, as can be seen by the concern he shows about escorting her home in his famous 1421 letter to his father (Letter 1), and also in an elegy written upon her death where he expressed his deep gratitude for the boundless affection she had shown for him since his childhood. His father remarried not long after Wu’s mother’s death and had three more sons, half-brothers to Wu. Wu Yubi’s biographer commented, “He served his father with perfect filial piety, he served his step-mother as if she were his own mother, and he treated his half-brothers as if they were friends.”17

From 1402 on, Wu Yubi pursued his studies, as all young men at the time, with the goal of passing the civil service exams with high scores in order to secure a prestigious job in the government hierarchy. With his father’s connections at the National University, he had the benefit of some of the best teachers around. One of them, Yang Pu (1372–1446), would eventually become one of the top officials in the whole government. These years were fraught with tension in the relationship between father and son. In temperament they were as different as day and night: the father was scholarly, ambitious, and highly disciplined; the son was dreamy, highly emotional, and mercurial. From Wu’s own accounts of these years as a teenager, he says he was pulled between the noble ambitions of his father and a rebellious spirit that flouted Confucian values.

When I got to be eighteen and nineteen, even though I was fairly good at my studies, still, since I was overly self-confident and pushy, I would boast to myself that to match the achievements of the ancients was not all that difficult. I would frequently slight the men of the past and carry out my affairs carelessly and disrespectfully. (CW 8:13b, Letter 1)

This kind of behavior occasioned frequent rebukes and punishment from his father.

As for the exams he was studying to pass, Wu struggled to make sense of them and the civil service system itself. These exams required mastery {xxv} of the Confucian classics, the underlying rationale being that government officials need to be smart, capable, and, most importantly, moral. If they studied the classics and knew them backwards and forwards, it was assumed that the moral teachings of the classics would rub off on them, making them noble in character. In fact, the competition to pass was extremely great and a fair amount of cheating took place. Wu increasingly became alienated from both the city of Nanjing and the “exam game.”

At the beginning of 1410, everything dramatically changed for Wu. Near the end of 1409, as Wu later described it,18 he came across a book of Song biographies, Record of the Origins of the School of the Two Chengs, which someone had sent his father. Casually picking the book up for a quick glance, he found, much to his surprise, that he was drawn into it. The more he read, the more absorbed he became. Here were the courageous heroes who had rescued the Way from a thousand years of oblivion when Daoism and Buddhism had dominated Chinese philosophical and religious life. They had responded to Mencius’ question, “Is there anyone who will continue the transmission of the Way?”

Of all of them, Cheng Hao was regarded by many as the most heroic in this regard. But what was Wu reading about him? Cheng Hao had a love of hunting, something he wasn’t proud of and wished to overcome. He was fairly confident that he had done so. But his teacher, Zhou Dunyi, voiced his doubt that he had indeed eliminated it, suspecting he had merely repressed it. Sure enough, sometime later when Cheng happened upon a group of men out hunting, he felt the tug of his old passion, and realized how perceptive his teacher had been and how foolishly he had assumed the ease of overcoming personal weaknesses.

This came as a bolt of lightning for Wu. Could it really be that the sages he regarded as having been born perfect had actually started out no different from himself? That they had had to struggle and became sages only after much study and effort? Suddenly, the crassness of spending one’s life trying to pass exams and compete for official positions repelled Wu. He felt that his life had changed dramatically and his life’s purpose was now clear. He would devote all his time and efforts to the pursuit of sagehood. He abruptly announced to his father that he was giving up all attempts to study for and sit for the exams. In a grand gesture, he burned all his {xxvi} practice sheets and essays and shut himself upstairs in his father’s house. There he obsessively pored over the writings and biographies of the Song Confucian masters:

Thereupon he abandoned his study for the civil service examinations, gave up involvement in worldly affairs, and secluded himself in an upper room. He exhaustively pored over the Four Books, the Five Classics, and the recorded conversations of the Song masters, trying to comprehend them experientially with his whole self—body and mind.19

Finally, when his father had had enough of Wu’s behavior, he sent him home and ordered that he get married. He was furious at his son’s decision and went so far as to disown him. To Wu Yubi’s distress, his father broke off all communication with him. Ten years would pass before Wu Pu agreed to see him and they reconciled. Part of Wu’s behavior was no doubt motivated by a fear that his son’s decision was a veiled criticism of the Yongle emperor and a refusal to serve an illegitimate ruler (and not so indirectly, a criticism of Wu Pu himself for having served this emperor). If so, or even if simply perceived as so, Wu Pu’s own life and that of his family would be in jeopardy. According to Ming scholar Fang Chao-ying, “His father must have been thoroughly alarmed by this declaration (of Wu Yubi’s not to serve), which, if discovered, could mean death to the entire family. So he kept Wu Yü-pi secluded for two years, and when the son would not repent, sent him home, and severed the relationship.”²⁰

Wu himself, however, never explicitly mentions the usurpation as his reason for giving up public life, which, if true, could not have been spoken openly as long as Yongle was still alive. Some indication that an element of protest may have been involved can be found in the third entry of his Journal: he raises the question of the culpability of Emperor Taizong (r. 976–997) of the Song dynasty for the death of his elder brother, Song Taizu, {xxvii} and his subsequent accession to the throne in the place of the heir apparent. Yongle had died the year earlier in 1424 and been given the temple name of Taizong, which would give some weight to this being a veiled criticism.

Wu returned to the countryside anxious to embrace his new life, dedicated to realizing this vague and dreamy ideal of becoming a sage. He had his lofty ambition before him, and now he was away from the evil influences of the capital with all its political intrigue and hypocrisy. But to his shock and dismay, things were not as he expected them to be. He came face-to-face with the demands of making a living for himself and his new wife with very limited financial resources. His sole recourse was to farm his family’s land. At the time he had only a smattering of the “will” and the “know-how” to make a living. He was deeply naive about life and its realities. It was as if he assumed that having committed himself to becoming a sage, all of life’s messiness would disappear and he would not have to be pestered by all the tiny irritating details of daily life. Giving up life as an official had economic repercussions. Chinese officials were granted regular stipends of grain, had their taxes reduced, and were not liable for corvée labor.

Even more distressing were the realities of his own disposition, which did not take easily to the discipline necessary for pursuing a life of sagehood. He couldn’t believe he was unable to get hold of himself as he thought he would: “At that time, I hardly understood the methods of learning to be a sage or worthy, yet I bragged to myself that there was no great difficulty in reaching the level of the ancients” (CW 10:2a). He found himself pulled back and forth between the ideal life that was so tantalizing and the realities of everyday life that were so prosaic. As unforeseen problems emerged in the actualization of his new commitment to becoming a sage, Wu spent the first nine years struggling between the realities of having to make a living and the desire to be a sage, bouncing back and forth between what might be considered vague, dreamy goals and the very concrete struggles to keep a roof over his family and food on the table. He expresses this tension in a poem he wrote:

Engaged in my studies, I neglect my hoe and plow;

Working at farming, I am remiss with my reading.

When idle in my studies, my mind and nature are thrown into disorder;

When lazy about farming, I find starvation and the cold press in on me.

Of these two responsibilities, I must regard both as important,

{xxviii} With the hope that I might each day make progress in both.

What shall I do about these ailments that tie me up?

I stumble along as the night turns to day. (CW 2:4a–b)

The year 1421 marked an important breakthrough for Wu in several areas of his life. We have a number of letters he wrote in this year to former teachers and friends,21 stating his new understanding of what the sagely enterprise is all about, and the fruitful progress he has made by focusing on the Four Books. In these letters he shares his struggles and successes with these men, grateful for their help and support. In his first poem of the New Year, he speaks of making Yan Hui, Confucius’ favorite disciple, his model. Confucius’ admiration for Yan Hui stemmed from the fact that Yan lived in mean circumstances yet loved to learn and maintained a joyful appreciation for life. But Wu is sad that he operates with the twin handicaps of having been born so much later in time and having such a weak disposition.

The other important milestone in Wu’s life, which is also related to his newfound understanding of himself and sagehood, was his reconciliation with his father. Of the many challenges Wu had faced since returning to the country, one of the heaviest burdens was the continued alienation of his father. In 1420, nine years after Wu had been sent home, he got up the courage to travel to Nanjing to make a personal appeal for reconciliation with his father. Despite the distance Wu had traveled and his daily pleadings once he arrived, Wu Pu remained adamant in his refusal to see his son. Wu Yubi was forced to give up:

Last year, in the sixth month, I came to wait upon you, hoping to get one glimpse of your face. I wished to report in full what had been happening these past ten years since I had left the capital for home, thinking I would rouse myself to action from that time on. But my offenses were so great that your mind remained unchanged and you refused to see me. Filled with great sorrow, I returned home. Is there any place in the world were one can be without a father? Truly I was like “a poor man who has no real home to which to return.” (CW 8:13b–4a, Letter 1)

{xxix} Wu set out again in the spring of 1421 to make another attempt at reconciliation, using the excuse of escorting his maternal grandmother home from Nanjing. Before he left, he had a dream of his father that left him crying. He wrote this poem:

Rivers and mountains have separated me from home for a long time.

How could I have been able to care for you in even the simplest way?

Right now I am confused as to where I am.

In my dream, I stand before you, catching a glimpse of your face.

I doubt not that your natural disposition is a loving one.

This makes my deep love for you start me crying.

I weep and weep and cannot stop.

Rising at dawn, I find my gown is still damp from tears. (CW 1:22a)

En route to Nanjing, Wu got cold feet, fearing another rejection. He got as far as the point of transfer for a ship on the Yangzi River bound for Nanjing when he froze. Indecisive about what he should do, he neither boarded the ship to Nanjing nor returned home. Instead he took a ship going west, in the opposite direction. His dreams of his father continued, like this one that he described in a poem:

I wish to write down the painful feelings of separation,

Without words, it is hard to begin to write.

What day will I finally receive the joy of seeing you?

In my dream I catch a brief glimpse of your face. (CW 1:24a)

Soon he realized that it was harvest time and he must return home in time to harvest his crops. He found a friend on board headed for Nanjing who promised to deliver a letter to his father in person, a letter that was both lengthy and highly emotional.22 It included a report on his behavior and his admission that he had often been at fault in the past:

{xxx} Since the beginning of this year, I have been reading the Four Books a great deal, not letting up for even a moment. I have some sense that my whole self—body and mind—has benefited from this in its own rough way. In my efforts at sharing the lot of the sages and worthies, I have made a good beginning. Only now do I realize why Heaven inflicted poverty and sickness on me and why you scolded and admonished me for my behavior. What a great blessing for me! (CW 8:14a–b, Letter 1)

The way Wu Yubi reports to his father suggests that part of the disaffection between father and son stemmed from Wu’s somewhat erratic and half-hearted ways upon his return home to the country. Wu Pu’s reputation as Director of Studies was that of a stern and exacting teacher, and he no doubt was even more exacting with his own sons, especially his eldest who had publicly professed his pursuit of sagehood. That Wu Pu was concerned about Yubi’s behavior is also suggested by a letter from a friend of Wu Pu’s which Yubi came across late in his life. The friend had written Wu Pu to assure him about his son:

Some time ago, I had a talk with your son, Yubi, for several hours. In searching out his inner state of mind, I discovered he was the type of person, described by Mencius, who could not be bent or moved by force or might, poverty or riches. While at the present moment, he is beset with difficulties, at a later time he certainly will achieve something great. So don’t worry about him. (CW 11:38b)

At the end of 1421, Wu went again to Nanjing. This time he was received by his father in a happy reunion. Wu’s poems at the end of the year reflect a joyful, optimistic tone. He speaks of the progress and good fortune he has experienced in the year just ending and his desire to leap into the New Year, fresh with new resolve to make even greater progress in his moral cultivation.

Wu’s relationship with his father continued to improve in the ensuing years as is evident in the four letters he wrote his father (see Letters 12a–d) until Wu Pu’s death in 1426. The most striking evidence is that Wu Pu sent his three younger sons, Yubi’s half-brothers, to the country to study with him in 1423. He also entrusted Yubi with the family genealogy, his books, and his personal papers, including letters from relatives and friends. Wu Yubi, for his part, continued to record dreams about his father in his {xxxi} poetry and took on the education of his brothers. When his father died, Wu Pu’s biographer noted, “Known to have had little money and to have shared even that little bit with less fortunate relatives, his family had to depend on his colleagues to help pay for his burial.”23 It was a great source of embarrassment for Wu and his brothers that they could not do better for their father in terms of his burial.

Wu started keeping his Journal in 1425, although he gives no indication why he started it at that particular point in his life. Indeed, he never says anything about why he decided to keep one at all. In 1428, he moved to a place called Xiaopo, which remained his home until his death (except for the years 1440–1442). In the late 1420s and 1430s we begin to hear mention of his children. He had one son and three daughters. From the evidence of his poetry, his relationship with his children was much closer than what he had shared with his father. He speaks of taking his daughters on outings in the fall to pick fruit, of listening to them playing the lute, and of teaching them the Analects.²⁴ His son, Xuanqing , is even more frequently mentioned. Wu describes the joys of teaching him lessons and harmonizing on the lute with him. One of the earliest poems about his son is entitled, “Xuanqing Reads at Night. In My Joy, I Wrote This Poem to Encourage Him in His Studies”:

At eight years old, you understand about being earnest in study.

Burning the night oil, we find it is past the second watch (9:00–11:00 p.m.).

Sagely results come from beginnings like this.

As Confucius said, “The Way is only made great by us humans.” (CW 2:28b–29a)²⁵

When traveling, Wu kept his son close by his side. On one occasion when his son lost some money on a trip, rather than scold him Wu tried to console him, telling him that the learning of the former sages was more important than money (CW 2:42a–b). In Wu’s old age, he entrusted much of his teaching responsibilities to Xuanqing.

{xxxii} As a rule, Chinese men made little mention of their wives in their writings, and Wu is no exception. But his biographer noted, “He loved his wife and treated her with great respect, that is, with the manners befitting a guest. There was no rudeness or overfamiliarity.”26 Among the times he mentions her in his writings, once was for her help in allowing him to maintain his studies: “The past several nights we have lacked oil for the lamp, so my poor wife has been burning firewood to provide light for my reading” (no. 117). Another time, he writes a letter to his best friend Hu Jiushao to ask him to accompany him to take his wife for medical help in the next town over.

The years until 1440 remained more or less quiet ones for Wu, preoccupied as he was with his family, farm, and students. One biographer describes these years thus:

During his middle years, his household was poor. He had inadequate food and clothing, and no protection from inclement weather. Engaged firsthand in the farming, he had calluses on his hands and feet.²⁷

Another account mentions that “In his coming and goings, the Master wore coarse garments and old shoes such that people didn’t even know that he was the son of the Director of Studies of the National University. He lived in the country, did his own plowing, and ate by the means of his own labor. If anything was not in the least bit according to moral principles, he would not do it. If it wasn’t from his own labor, he wouldn’t eat it.”²⁸

In 1440, Wu moved temporarily to Chonghu, his family seat in the next county, to tend the family graves and to lecture in the local schools. By this time, he was beginning to emerge as a public figure and respected teacher and was thus honored at his arrival by a formal greeting by the magistrate of Linchuan. In this period we find a dramatic increase in the number of prefaces and commemorative and occasional pieces and poems, given to officials, students, and families of students, accompanied by a definite shift in tone from a more private and reflective to a more public, formal one. Already in 1421, we have evidence from the letters he sent to friends and {xxxiii} local education officials that he was interested in the role of teacher. Both of his sisters were married to education officials with whom he exchanged letters about programs of self-cultivation. He seemed to have begun his career as a teacher gradually, with no specific starting date. Students from his local area started coming to him. Gradually, as his reputation spread, he began attracting a greater number of students from a wider area. Students often came to him upon the recommendation of officials in their home areas, as was the case with Lou Liang and Zhou Wen, who were sent in 1448 by the Prefect of their hometown to study under Wu.

In the years following his return to Xiaopo late in 1442, Wu devoted much of his time to his son, students, and visitors, teaching them and taking them on outings to local scenic spots, family graves, and Chan temples. In his poems, there is a note of joy and celebration of life not found in such abundance in his earlier life. Nevertheless, he continued to complain about poor health and frequent illnesses, though rarely mentioning anything specific. In 1453, he undertook a major trip to Nanjing for medical care. He gives us no details about his condition. There are no Journal entries for these middle years.

As Wu became well known as a respected teacher, he began to receive recommendations for public office. While the principal access to government positions was through the civil service examination system, some positions were filled on the basis of strong recommendations by noted officials. The first recommendation Wu received came in 1446 from Mr. He Zixuan, Assistant Surveillance Commissioner for Shanxi province. In his letter petitioning the emperor, He noted that Wu Yubi was the son of the former Director of Studies of the National University, was a master of classical learning, and a man of impeccable conduct. Wu had not been ambitious for public office, He wrote, but now that he was over fifty years of age, the government should avail itself of his services before he became too old to serve. The emperor should also note the fact that Wu ran a private school that charged no tuition and that his students all tried to emulate him out of admiration.29

{xxxiv} Although the Imperial Court responded positively to this and subsequent recommendations by other officials made in 1450, 1452, and 1454 by sending Wu official invitations to court, Wu turned them all down. Finally, when recommended in 1457 by the general Shi Heng (d. 1460), he decided to accept. The Chinese political situation in the 1450s found the Imperial Court in an awkward situation. When Emperor Yingzong had been captured in battle by the Mongols in 1449, the government did not fight to get him back. Rather, they put his brother on the throne as the Daizong emperor. When the Mongols decided they did not want the emperor, they sent him back. The court did not know what to do with him, however, since his brother was now the emperor. The government solved the problem by putting the Yingzong emperor under house arrest. General Shi Heng had been one of the prime movers in the coup of 1456 known as the “forcing of the palace gate,” in which the Yingzong emperor was restored to the throne and the Daizong emperor put under house arrest (where he died soon afterward). The Yingzong emperor then, in a surprise move, turned on many who had helped restore him to the throne. “Early acts of injustice made the first years of his reign unpopular. It seems he tried to improve his image. His choice of Hsüeh Hsüan and Li Hsien as grand secretaries met with approval. After Hsüeh Hsüan retired in the middle of 1457, the emperor sought another respected Confucianist and found him in the person of the country teacher Wu Yü-pi.”30

The imperial invitation to court arrived at Wu’s home late in the year of 1457.³¹ After a round of formalities with local officials, friends, and family, Wu set out for Beijing (the capital had changed from Nanjing to Beijing in 1421) in the third month of 1458 and arrived there two months later. The day after he arrived, he had his first audience with the emperor and was offered the position of Tutor to the Heir Apparent in the Directory of Instruction, a largely ceremonial job. He declined the offer. The emperor is then said to have remarked to Wu, “For a long time now, I have heard {xxxv} about your lofty virtue and have especially invited you to come here. Why won’t you accept the office?” Wu responded:

Your humble servant is just a common, lowly person. I have had many infirmities since my youth and so have hidden my traces away in mountains and forests. Basically I have no lofty behavior of which to speak. It was only due to the spreading of a reputation which exceeds the reality that I have been mistakenly put forward in the recommendation papers. That you should have been misled by these reports, sending me an official invitation with gifts of silk right to my door, has caused me unbearable shame. I must firmly decline your generous offer. This year I am sixty-eight years old and really cannot assume the duties of office.32

Reassuring Wu that the office provided plenty of leisure and was not too taxing, the emperor showered Wu with gifts and had him escorted to the government hostel. Among the gifts were eight bolts of silk, wine, lamb, and grain. He then turned to Li Xian, his grand secretary, and remarked, “This old fellow is not so out of it as people say. Convince him to accept the office.” Wu continued to send memorials to the throne,³³ declining the office and asking for permission to return home. A week after his arrival, Wu gave a lecture to the inner court on his favorite text, Practicing the Mean. After this he submitted another memorial in which he requested leave to return home as well as permission to see the books in the Imperial Library before he left. Neither request was granted.

Finally, after two months in the capital, physically ill and homesick, Wu had his son appeal to the Board of Civil Office on his behalf. The grand secretary, Li Xian, thereafter convinced the emperor that Wu could not be forced to stay, and that the proper thing to do would be to let him memorialize once more for permission to return home. Wu did so early in the eighth month, and his request was granted. In his last audience, the emperor presented him with an imperial letter ordering that he be provided with a stipend of grain for life, and had an imperial messenger escort him back to Jiangxi. One account describes how the emperor impressed upon the messenger the need to take special care of Wu on the trip back {xxxvi} since he was old and sickly, and since the weather would be getting colder, travel would be more difficult. Before Wu left, he submitted a memorial of Ten Maxims for Sagely Government. Drawing on passages from the classics and the works of the Song masters, Wu appealed to the emperor to take seriously his responsibility to be a sage emperor like Yao and Shun, and to put these maxims into practice right away.

Wu arrived back home in Jiangxi in the middle of the tenth month of 1458, after a short stay in Nanjing along the way. Once home, there followed another round of ceremonials with the imperial messenger, friends, and officials. In the following year, Wu sent a student with his formal letter of thanks to the emperor.

Wu’s journey to Beijing and his refusal of office generated controversy both during his lifetime and afterward.34 Some criticized him for accepting the invitation, citing Zhu Xi’s criticism of Yang Shi in the Song dynasty for having emerged from retirement late in life to serve under the much criticized minister Cai Jing. To this, the most famous Ming Neo-Confucian, Wang Yangming countered that neither Yang nor Wu Yubi had anything to be ashamed of in going to court.³⁵ Others attacked Wu for accepting the patronage of a person like Shi Heng, as he implicitly did when he wrote a colophon for Shi’s family genealogy in which he declared him his patron.³⁶ Shi fell in disgrace shortly after Wu left the capital and died in prison in 1460. To these critics, the late–Ming radical Li Zhi (1527–1602) responded that at least Shi appreciated Wu:

Some regard the Master’s recommendation for position by Shi Heng as a shameful thing. They do not realize that during the previous reign of Jingtai, others had dispatched official messengers to invite the Master to court. Shi Heng was not the first. That Shi Heng even appreciated the Master’s virtue was better than later people who were envious of his virtue.³⁷

{xxxvii} Still others, the most strident of whom was Yin Zhi (1427–1511), criticized Wu for going and not accepting office. They claimed he was holding out for a position more prestigious than Tutor to the Heir Apparent. When he was not successful in his attempt, according to Yin, Wu refused to have any position at all, returning home more arrogant and proud than before.38

Wu’s own explanation was that he had gone to court to express his gratitude to the emperor, not wishing to be thought ungrateful for the favors bestowed on him. His refusal to stay was only because of sickness and old age. Some of his biographers added that Wu was also not so naïve about the political situation and what his acceptance might entail.

Now the Master realized that Shi Heng would inevitably fall from power. Therefore he maintained his purity and aloofness from the situation. When he returned to the south, people asked him why he had not stayed. He answered, “I merely wished to preserve my nature and destiny.”³⁹

Wu’s student and biographer Lou Liang commented that Wu had earnest affection for the emperor and that declining office was not a matter of refusing to spread the learning of the former sage kings, but that it was the only possible thing for him to do at this time. Wu was immensely affected by the whole event, as is quite evident in the number of poems written in the two to three years afterward with titles that ran along the line of “Recalling What Happened on This Day in 1458 While in the Capital.”⁴⁰

Wu returned home with even greater prestige and a guaranteed income, enabling him to spend the last eleven years of his life in more comfort and leisure. Even so, it was said that he continued to wear commoner’s clothes and plow his fields. During this time, he continued to accept students, placing his son in charge of them during his absences. He had the added joy of becoming a grandfather, taking delight with his grandchildren on outings with his students and relaxing with them in his Pavilion of the {xxxviii} Self-at-Ease. From 1461 to 1466 he traveled extensively, surely made possible by his greater wealth and prestige. The most emotional and fulfilling of these trips was in 1462 to pay his respects at the birthplace of his hero Zhu Xi in Qianyang, Fujian province. He also did a great deal of traveling in his own locality in central Jiangxi, visiting friends, officials, and ancestral graves.41

From 1467 until his death in 1469, Wu stayed close to home. As his eyesight was failing (he had always had trouble with his eyes), he reported that he was unable to do very much reading. Instead, we find once again a more reflective tone and a sudden increase in the number of entries in his Journal. A certain somber tone is present, due in part to the death of several of his good friends during this period, especially Hu Jiushao.⁴² Wu himself died late in 1469, at the age of seventy-nine (seventy-seven, by Western reckoning). He was honored by the locals as Master Pingjun (“Invited Scholar” ), a reference to his having been invited to court in his lifetime, an honor that bestowed prestige to the area. He was buried in the family graves in 1472.

As was usually the case when a Chinese scholar died, his various writings were collected and published as his Collected Works. In addition, someone, usually a person close to the scholar, would write a “biographical account” (xingzhuang ). Wu’s student Lou Liang published the Biographical Account of Master Wu Yubi at the request of Wu’s son in 1488, nineteen years after his death. Lou’s work provided the basis for most of the later biographies of Wu. As for the collection of his writings, the Collected Works of Master Wu Yubi, the first edition was published around 1494, under the direction of Wu Dai, the prefect of Fuzhou. In his preface to the work, Wu describes how, when he first took his new job as prefect in the area, he went to pay his respects to Wu Yubi’s grave and requested Wu’s son to collect his father’s writings for publication.⁴³

This first edition of the Collected Works did not fare well, parts were lost and parts had errors. Neither did the shrine at Wu’s grave: it burned down, and his family’s poverty prevented them from restoring it. In 1526, thirty-seven years after his death, the shrine was rebuilt and designated by {xxxix} the Jiajing emperor as “Shrine Honoring a Confucian Scholar.” That same year, by order of the governor of the province, Wu’s Collected Works were republished, in twelve juan (fascicle) instead of the original four juan. Xu Dai, an Investigating Censor, was commissioned to write the preface to the new edition. In it, Xu describes some of the history of the text and the shrine. He also speaks of the merits of Wu’s writings:

Students who wish to commit themselves to his purpose and study his teachings must examine this collection of his writings. It is a real example of a literary contribution to this age: indeed, it is worthy of being transmitted along with the records of the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi. With the publication and transmission of his writings, his name will not be forgotten, and the influence of the Master’s virtue will be handed down.44

For Wu Yubi as a commoner to have received such a designation for his shrine from the emperor was a great honor. Nonetheless, two of his students, Hu Juren and Chen Xianzhang, were given even higher honors. In 1584, they were placed in the official Confucian temple and given posthumous titles, honors not accorded their teacher. According to Zou Yuanbiao (1551–1624), a follower of Wang Yangming, Wu’s having been left out of the official Confucian temple was a source of some controversy in his time. His own view was that whether or not Wu was enshrined did not take away from his worth as a moral man. For Zou the whole notion of society even presuming to make such judgments of who was or wasn’t worthy of enshrinement ran contrary to the very nature of sagehood.⁴⁵ The radical Li Zhi, who had defended Wu Yubi with respect to the Shi Heng criticisms, spoke in Wu’s favor in this matter as well. “The Master’s character and learning were superior to Hu Juren’s a hundred times over, but in the Confucian temple sacrifices, Wu is left out and Hu is included. How could this be?”⁴⁶

1 Pei-yi Wu, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 93. Wu Yü-pi is Wu Yubi according to the Wade-Giles romanization system.

2 “Introduction to the Congren School,” in Case Studies of Ming Confucians (Mingru xuean)1:1a.

3 The term Neo-Confucianism is a more recent term of Western origin, and not something that the men we are discussing would have been familiar with. They would not have described themselves as Neo-Confucians. As such, some contemporary scholars shy away from using the term. I use the term for want of a better one and because of its wide usage in the West. But the reader is advised that it is not without its problems. What is more, the revival of Confucianism in the Song was multifaceted and encompassed literature, statecraft, and economics as well as thought. I focus on the Cheng-Zhu school, which is often referred to as li-xue , School of Principle, or as dao-xue , Learning of the Way. For more on these topics, see the Suggested Further Reading section.

4 Zhang Zai, “Western Inscription,” trans. by W. T. Chan, Source Book of Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 497.

5 Analects 9:5, trans. by Edward Slingerland, Confucius Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2003), p. 87.

6 Mencius 7B:38.

7 Neo-Confucianism was a much broader, multifaceted tradition than I can cover here, so I focus on the Cheng-Zhu school.

8 They conquered north China in 1234 and the rest of China in 1279. The dynasty lasted until 1368.

9 These included the Great Learning, Analects of Confucius, Mencius, and Practicing the Mean.

10 The primary source for Wu’s life is the Biographical Account of Wu Yubi (Kangzhai xiansheng xingzhuang) by Lou Liang upon which most other biographies, such as the ones in Case Studies in Ming Biographies and in the History of the Ming (Mingshi), are based. The most extensive biography in English is the entry on him found in the L. Carrington Goodrich and Chao-ying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography (hereafter DMB) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976) pp. 1497–1501, which was co-written by Chaoying Fang, Julia Ching, and Huang P’ei.

11 Wu’s name was probably changed after the remarriage of his father and the birth of three half-brothers, all with the initial name of “Yu.”

12 Sources for Wu Pu and his father are “Elegy for the Director of Studies of the National University, Master Wu Pu,” by Yang Rong, in Collected Works of Yang Rong (Yang wenmin gong ji), and “Elegy,” by Yang Shiqi in Xu Hong, Records of the Noble Conduct of Famous Officials of the Ming (Ming mingchen wanyan lu).

13 Yang Rong, “Elegy,” Collected Works of Master Yang Rong, p. 954.

14 By Chinese reckoning, Wu Yubi was twelve. In China, a person is considered one year old at birth. Everybody is considered one year older on New Year’s Day. Since Wu was born near the end of the year, he was actually considered two years old when he was only about a month old by Western reckoning.

15 Recall that Mengxiang was the name given to him at birth by his grandfather and used by the family while he was very young, and that by Western reckoning he was only three years old.

16 Collected Works of Wu Yubi (hereafter CW) 4:31a–b. Wu included this poem in a note appended to a New Year’s day poem he wrote in 1457 remembering his father.

17 Records of the Words and Deeds of Ming Confucians (Mingru yanxinglu) 13:10b.

18 See “‘Colophon’ to the Record of the Origins of the School of the Two Chengs” where he describes this experience.

19 Case Studies of Ming Confucians 1:1a, and Biographical Account of Master Wu Yubi 10:7b. Elsewhere Wu Yubi also attributes his decision to heeding the last passage of the Mencius text, “Is there no one to continue it?”: “When I was around eighteen or nineteen, I read about Cheng Hao’s love for the hunt and realized my path of error had to be changed. I read the last section of Mencius and realized that keeping up with the swift-moving carriage of the Way was a difficult challenge” CW 10:14b.

20 Fang Chao-ying, “Wu Yü-pi,” in DMB, p. 1498.

21 See “Letters and Miscellaneous from Wu Yubi’s Collected Works” for translations of these letters.

22 For a full translation of the letter, from which I have been quoting sections of, see Letter 1 in “Letters and Miscellaneous.”

23 “Elegy,” in Records of the Noble Conduct of Famous Officials of the Ming 23:18b.

24 For references to his daughters, see CW 2:24a, 2:25a, 2:24b, and 11:18b.

25 Reference to Analects 15:29. For other poems about teaching his son, see CW 2:35b, 2:40a, 3:15b, and 3:16a.

26 Records of the Words and Deeds of Ming Confucians 3:10a–b.

27 Biographical Account of Wu Yubi 10:8a.

28 Ibid.

29 The text of this and the other four recommendations for office can be found in the Collected Works of Master Wu Yubi, with Appended Sources. The Appended Sources section contains various primary materials associated with Wu’s career. Hereafter I will refer to it as “Appended Sources,” CW. The summary of He’s recommendation here is from 8a–b.

30 DMB pp. 292–93. In the pinyin romanization system, Hsüeh Hsüan is Xue Xuan, Li Hsien is Li Xian, and Wu Yü-pi is Wu Yubi.

31 Text of the invitation letter can be found in “Appended Sources,” CW. The following account of Wu’s trip to court is based on material from Biographical Account of Wu Yubi (10:9b–11a), Wu’s biography in the History of the Ming 282:3171, the Case Studies of Ming Confucians, and Li Zhi’s biography of Wu in the Continuation of the Book to Be Hidden Away (Xu cangshu).

32 Li Zhi, Continuation of the Book to Be Hidden Away, juan 21, pp. 416–17.

33 All of his memorials to the throne, four in number, are included in CW 8:1a–4a.

34 The other major criticism about Wu had to do with the family’s ancestral grave property. Stories circulated that Wu had sued his younger brother and had appeared in court, disrespectfully dressed in commoner’s clothes. See DMB pp. 1499–1500 for a discussion of the accusations and the realities of the situation.

35 Mentioned in Records of the Words and Deeds of Ming Confucians 3:13a–b.

36 This colophon appears in CW 12:2a–b. In it Wu signs himself a men-xia-ren , or protégé of Shi Heng.

37 Continuation of the Book to Be Hidden Away, juan 21, p. 417.

38 Yin Zhi, Record of Bits and Pieces Put Together by Yin Zhi, p. 891. See DMB, p. 1500, for a rebuttal of Yin’s claim.

39 Case Studies of Ming Confucians 1:2a. That is, to preserve his integrity from the corruption of court life. Here “nature” refers to his personal integrity and “destiny” to the context in which his nature is developed and expressed.

40 See his poetry for the years 1459 and 1460, CW 6:1a–12b, especially 6:2a–b and 6:7b–10a.

41 The poems in CW for 1461–1466 reflect his great joy and delight and include a set of poems for each trip (6:13a–48b, 7:1a–34a).

42 The poems in his last years are also more somber and reflective (CW 7:34a–46b).

43 “Appended Sources,” CW 22b–23a.

44 Preface, Collected Works of Wu Yubi (Siku quanshu zhenbu edition) 4a–b.

45 Collected Works of Zuo Yuanbiao (Yuanxue ji) 4:20a–b.

46 Continuation of the Book to Be Hidden Away, juan 21, p. 417.