1613: Gu Yanwu was born in Qiandun, a village some twenty-four li south of Kunshan city in what was then Jiangnan province, on the twenty-eighth day of the fifth month of the forty-first year of the Wanli reign period (1613). At first he was named Jishen; this was later changed to Jiang. His zi (style) was initially Zhongqing (loyal and pure). He was the second son of Gu Tongying, a minor scholar and noted poet, but was later adopted as the heir of Tongying’s paternal uncle, Gu Shaofei, and Shaofei’s deceased son, Tongji. When he died in 1601, at the age of eighteen, Tongji was betrothed to a woman named Wang, who did not subsequently marry but attached herself to Shaofei’s household and gained renown as a model of propriety and rectitude.
1615: At the age of three, Gu contracted smallpox, which left him with a permanent disfigurement of one eye.
1618–1623: When Gu was six, his paternal grandmother, Li Shuoren, died. At this point his adoptive mother, Wang, assumed management of the household and was largely responsible for Gu’s early education. At the age of seven, he began attendance at the local school. His grandfather, Shaofei, now took over supervision of his studies.
1626: In this year, Gu is said to have completed his reading of the Comprehensive Mirror with his adoptive grandfather. According to Willard Peterson, their practice was to compare what they had read in the older work with what appeared in the Capital Gazette (“The Life of Ku Yen-wu [1613–1682],” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 28 [1968]: 125). Also in this year, aged fourteen, he passed an examination in Suzhou to become a government student and is said also to have joined the Society for Restoration (Fushe). In this year Gu Tongying died at the age of forty-two.
1630: Now aged eighteen, Gu was placed twentieth in the first rank of the preliminary examination in Suzhou but failed the subsequent triennial examination held later that year in Nanjing.
1631: Gu was placed eleventh in the first rank of the annual examination. In this year, he married a woman of the surname Wang from Taicang and changed his name to Gu Jiang.
1632: Gu was again placed in the first rank of the annual examination, this time in fourteenth position.
1633: In this year Gu was placed in the third (lowest) rank of the preliminary examination.
1634: Gu’s adoptive mother received official recognition of her virtue when the title “chaste and filial” was given to her for her gate by a regional inspecting censor.
1636: In this year, to quote Peterson, “another regional inspecting censor memorialized the throne for permission to grant her [Wang] the title ‘chaste and filial.’ The petition was approved, and, when the imperial honor was bestowed, all of Gu Shaofei’s and Gu Jiang’s friends from the surrounding districts came with gifts and congratulations” (“Life of Ku Yen-wu,” 128–29). Gu was then in his twenty-fourth year.
1638: In both the annual examinations and the preliminary examinations for this year, Gu was placed in the third rank.
1639: In the seventh month of this year, Gu again failed the triennial examination, being ranked in the second class. As Peterson has noted, the prefaces to his two geographical compilations (the Zhaoyu Zhi and the Tianxia Junguo Libing Shu) refer to 1639 as the year in which he began to gather geographical materials (“Life of Ku Yen-wu,” 131).
1640: Gu attempted the annual examination again in this year and was ranked in the second class.
1641: In the spring, when Gu was twenty-nine, his adoptive paternal grandfather, Gu Shaofei, died. The period of mourning following this death marked the end of Gu’s examination attempts.
1642: Gu’s older brother, Gu Xiang, died, thus making Gu Jiang the head of the household. Faced with the expenses of two funerals in quick succession and beset by financial pressures, he mortgaged part of the family estate to one Ye Fangheng, a matter that became the subject of an ongoing dispute.
1643: In this year Gu purchased rank in the National University.
1644: Impelled by the fall of Beijing and the inevitable progress of the Manchu army south, Gu moved his adoptive mother and the remainder of the household to Tangshi in Changshu district in the fourth month and, in the tenth month, to the family residence in Qiandun. In the twelfth month, Gu moved his household again, this time to a village called Yulianjing, between Kunshan and Changshu. During this time the alternative Ming government was being established in Nanjing. Late in 1644, the magistrate of Kunshan, Yang Yongyan, submitted Gu’s name to the Ming court as a recommended candidate for office, and Gu was called to serve as bingbu siwu (associated with the Ministry of War).
1645: During this year, Kunshan was captured, and several of Gu’s relatives were directly involved in the conflict. Two of his younger brothers were killed, and his biological mother was injured. It seems probable that Gu himself was not involved in the fighting. Earlier in the year, he had gone to Nanjing, ostensibly to take up his position with the Ministry of War, but this never eventuated. The Manchu forces entered Nanjing, and, in the sixth month, Gu retired to Yulianjing, where, in all probability, he remained during the hostilities in Kunshan. At the end of this year, Gu’s adoptive mother starved herself to death rather than submit to the alien regime. The year also saw Gu’s presentation of four substantial essays on political matters and his change of name from Gu Jiang to Gu Yanwu (literally, “warlike and blazing”). This was accompanied by the destruction of all his previously written poems.
1646: For this and several succeeding years, relatively little is known of Gu’s activities. According to Peterson, in the spring of 1646 he was summoned to the court of the Prince of Tang in Yanping but did not go, in part at least because his adoptive mother had remained unburied, awaiting the hoped-for Ming restoration (“Life of Ku Yen-wu,” 147).
1647: With no prospect of a Ming restoration in sight, Gu’s adoptive mother was buried, and in the twelfth month, Gu returned to Yulianjing. Prior to this, he had traveled with his close friend Gui Zhuang to Wuxing.
1648–1650: After completion of his mourning in Yulianjing, Gu began a period of travel, first in the Suzhou area and then in the south. To facilitate his travels, he assumed an appearance somewhat in accordance with Manchu requirements. His long poem “Wandering About” alludes to this. Indeed, his poems from this period, which represent a new beginning poetically, reflect his travels and his thoughts on the devastation of war.
1651: In this year, aged thirty-nine, Gu made the first of a series of visits to the tomb of Ming Tai Zu (r. 1368–1398) in Nanjing.
1652–1654: During these years, Gu resided in Nanjing, although his wife continued to live in Kunshan. In the spring of 1654, he set up a residence in Shenlie Shan, which facilitated his continuing visits to Ming Tai Zu’s tomb.
1655: Now aged forty-three, Gu returned to Kunshan and became involved in a serious legal matter involving a servant, Lu En, a longtime member of the Gu household, who had transferred his allegiance to Ye Fangheng, with whom Gu was contesting a property dispute. Perhaps with the connivance of Ye, Lu sought to discredit Gu by informing local officials that he had been connected with the southern Ming court in Fuzhou. On his return to Kunshan in the fifth month of 1665, Gu and his associates seized Lu and drowned him. Gu was arrested and held by the associates of Ye. His initial trial, at which he was sentenced to forced labor, was also influenced by Ye. Ultimately, through the intercession of his friends, in particular Gui Zhuang and Lu Zepu, he was retried in a different court and his sentence reduced to a beating. He was released in the spring of 1656.
1656: Following his release, Gu returned to Kunshan. Shortly thereafter, his natural mother, He, died. In the intercalary sixth month, Gu set out for Nanjing. During this journey, he was attacked by an assassin sent by Ye Fangheng and was fortunate to escape with only a head wound thanks to the intervention of a bystander. Also in this year Gu’s household in Kunshan was robbed by Ye’s ruffians.
1657: In the spring, Gu returned to Kunshan, but realizing he was unable to contest effectively any legal battle with Ye, he again left his home area and departed on his northern travels. Thus began a period of extensive travel and also of substantial literary production. It was during the years from 1657 to 1677 that the major part of the Rizhi Lu was written.
1658: In the spring of this year, now aged forty-six, Gu went to Tai’an and climbed Mount Tai. He then traveled to Yanzhou and on to Qufu and Zouxian, where he visited the temples of Confucius, Mencius, and the Duke of Zhou. Traversing Zhangqiu, Changshan, Qinan, and Laizhou, he reached the capital. He left Beijing late in the year.
1659: Gu, based in Shandong since 1657, continued his travels, passing through Shanhaiguan, a place of obvious strategic importance, and then journeying in a southwesterly direction along the coast. In the autumn of this year, Gu went to Yangzhou but returned to Tianjin later in the year. This year also saw his first visit to Shisanling, site of the northern Ming tombs at Tianshou Shan, north of Beijing. Also in 1659 Gu visited Lingyan Temple, southwest of Qinan in Shandong, and obtained there, in the ruined building, a number of inscriptions from the Tang period. Thereafter, his travels were at least in part aimed at the gathering of such materials.
1660: This year saw Gu’s return to Jiangnan and to Nanjing.
1661: In the spring of this year, Gu resumed his travels, traversing Suzhou and Hangzhou before reaching Shaoxing. Finally, in the autumn, he returned to Shandong. Apropos of these journeys, Peterson has written, “It is difficult to discern why he traveled in the south at this time,” suggesting subsequently that it may have been to attend to his property and “to reconnoiter the area and estimate the extent of Qing consolidation” (“Life of Ku Yen-wu,” 208). In the last month of the year, he returned to Shandong and completed his short work Shandong Kaogu Lu.
1662: In this, his fifty-first year, Gu’s travels continued, including a visit to Shanxi, during which he located an old text of interest at a temple at Mount Huo, in the southern part of the province. In this year, he wrote the preface to his extensive geographical work, the Tianxia Junguo Libing Shu, begun in 1639, for which he had been collecting materials throughout his travels.
1663: In this year, Gu’s travels included visits to Taiyuan, Wutai Shan, Huayin, and Xi’an. He called on Wang Hongzhuan and, later, the renowned Shaanxi scholar Li Yong. Also, while in Shaanxi, he visited Zhu Cungang, a descendant of the Ming imperial house, by whom he was asked to edit and write a preface for a compilation of Zhu’s father’s poems. This was also the year of the trial of literati in northern Zhejiang involved in the preparation of an unofficial Ming history. Although Gu himself was not directly implicated in the case, some of his friends were, and he later wrote an account of the matter.
1664: Gu’s travels during this year included Changping, a further visit to the northern Ming tombs, and to Henan, where he called upon the noted scholar Sun Qifeng, in Huixian in the northern part of the province.
1665: This year, after travels through Tai’an and Dezhou, saw Gu’s return to Qinan, where he established a farm in Zhangqiu, taking over some property of one Xie Zhangji, who had been in his debt. He also traveled to Qufu, where he again visited Confucius’s tomb, and to Queli, the site of the Sage’s home.
1666: Gu, now fifty-four, continued his travels from his Shandong base and included a visit to the residence of Chen Shangnian, where the young scholar Li Yindu, with whom Gu had previously become acquainted, was working as a family tutor. Also in this year, in conjunction with twenty or so others, he was involved in the development of some uncultivated land north of Yanmen.
1667: Gu’s travels during this year included his last trip south, to Jiangnan. It was in this year that his well-known work on phonetics, the Yinxue Wushu, was first published, with the aid of Chang Shao, in Shanyang in Jiangsu.
1668: This was a momentous year for the fifty-six-year-old Gu. On the fourteenth day of the second month, while residing in a monastery in Beijing, he learned of his implication in a trial in Shandong. He traveled back to Qinan, arriving in the third month to find that he had been accused of sedition by a certain Jiang Yuanheng. The charge involved a number of scholars said to have been sympathetic to the Ming and slanderous, in their writings, toward the Qing rulers. Gu remained in custody for approximately six months, being released in the tenth month of that year.
1669: Gu’s northern travels continued, especially between Shandong and the capital. He also went to Zhangqiu to resolve the issue of ownership of the farm he had acquired in 1665 and that had been taken over by others during his imprisonment. It was toward the end of this year that Pan Lei traveled from Shanyang to Qinan to become Gu’s student.
1670: This year, Gu, now fifty-eight, saw the first publication of the Rizhi Lu in eight juan.
1671: In the spring of this year, Gu was visited by two young nephews, sons of two of Gu’s younger brothers. Later in the year, he was summoned by the Qing official Xiong Cilü and asked to collaborate in the compilation of the Ming history, a request he declined. Following this, he left the capital and traveled to Taiyuan in Shaanxi, where he was engaged in some literary work, which included the punctuation of a commentary on the Han history.
1672: Despite reaching the age of sixty, Gu’s travels continued. He journeyed from Shanxi back to the capital, where he stayed with his nephew, Xu Yuanwen, for two months before returning, in the fifth month, to Qinan. In the eighth month, he again returned to the capital, staying with Xu as before, and later traveled to Dezhou and through Henan back to Shanxi.
1673–1674: Gu’s travels continued, taking in Shandong, Shanxi, and Henan.
1675: Gu, now aged sixty-three, established a study in Qixian, southern Shanxi, in a house built for him there by Dai Tingshi, who had supported a number of Ming loyalists.
1676: In the first month, Gu returned from Shanxi to Shandong and, in the second month, entered the capital. He is said to have taken a concubine in Jingle and subsequently ordered Gu Yansheng, the son of one of his distant cousins whom Gu had adopted as his own son, to come north to meet him. This he did in Dezhou, where, according to Peterson, they “fulfilled the rites of father and son” (“Life of Ku Yen-wu,” 244).
1677: Aged sixty-five, Gu continued to travel, leaving the capital in the fourth month and journeying to Dezhou. In the ninth month, he went to Shaanxi, where he visited Li Zhongfu. Toward the end of the year, he traveled to Huayin, visiting Wang Hongzhuan before returning to Qixian. While with Wang he apparently discussed the possibility of setting up a residence in Shaanxi. Gu moved his books to Huayin and a plot of land was purchased.
1678: This year was notable for an attempt to involve the sixty-six-year-old Gu in Qing officialdom. In the fourth month, while in Fuping in Shaanxi, he was invited to the magistrate’s yamen. He refused this and a subsequent invitation, as he also refused a request later in this year from the son of the commander in chief in Gansu, Zhang Yunyi, to go to that province. The same Zhang had earlier (in 1671) contributed to the cost of publication of Gu’s short work Zuo Zhuan Dujie Buzheng.
1679: Early in the year, Gu again visited Wang Hongzhuan in Huayin and joined with him in planning a shrine and academy there to commemorate a visit by Zhu Xi to the place in 1185. Also in this year, he petitioned the History Board for the inclusion of his adoptive mother in the biographies of women in the Ming history.
1680: In the first month Gu went again to Fuping. Subsequently, while with his adopted son in Fenzhou, he received news of the death of his wife, who had remained in Kunshan throughout the period of her husband’s extensive northern travels. He met his mourning obligations while staying at a friend’s house and sent a poem to mark the occasion of her death. Later in the year, he returned to Huayin in relation to his work with Wang Hongzhuan on the shrine to Zhu Xi.
1681: The first part of this year found Gu, now aged sixty-nine, back in Fenzhou, which he left in the second month to travel to Quwo and thence to Jiezhou. In the fourth month, he again went to Huayin to see Wang Hongzhuan. On the second day of the eighth month, he began what was to be his last journey, setting out to travel, via Yuncheng, to Quwo. On the eleventh day of the eighth month, three days after he arrived in Quwo, he became ill and had difficulty walking. In the tenth month, he moved to the house of Han Xuan. In this year he completed the rites of adoption with his nephew Gu Yansheng and while there arranged the marriage of his adopted son to the daughter of an eminent local family.
1682: The start of this, his final year, found him, now aged seventy, still staying with Han Xuan in Shanxi. Although his health had shown improvement, on the eighth day of the first month his foot slipped as he was mounting his horse and he fell to the ground. There was a marked decline in his condition, and he died early on the morning of the ninth day of the first month of 1682. Han Xuan attended to his funeral arrangements, and, in the third month, his coffin accompanied by his adopted son, Gu Yanwu was returned to Kunshan, where he was buried.