Historical Celebrities

Qu Yuan

Qu Yuan (about 340 B.C.一278 B.C.) was a great poet and politician of the State of Chu in Chinese history.His given name was Ping and his courtesy name was Yuan.He gave himself a name of Zheng Ze and the courtesy name,Lin Jun.He lived in Lepingli of Guixiang in the State of Chu at the late period of the Warring States Period.

When he was young,he lived in Guixiang near the Xiling Gorge. He was greatly influenced by the beautiful scenery and he made an effort to develop his inner beauty. He was very diligent and loved to keep tidy.In Lepingli today,there are many folk tales about his life and studies during his childhood,and there are also some cultural relics concerning the patriotic poet,such as Zhuoying Spring ,Mirroring Well,Book-Reading Cave,Ode to Orange Tree Hillside and Three Peddlers Growing Jade-White Rice．

In about the 15th year of Emperor Huai of the State of Chu,when Qu Yuan was about 25,he was accepted to the royal court to serve as a supervisor and was in charge of foreign affairs. He was quite learned but he was later demoted to an imperial household administrator. After that,he was banished by a muddle-headed ruler to a remote place,south of the Yangtze River.When he learned the news that the State of Qin had occupied the Chu capital,he was so overcome with indignation and sorrow that he threw himself into the Miluo River ( in today's Hunan Province).

Qu Yuan was the first great patriotic poet in Chinese history and he was also the founder of the genre of romantic literature.His poems including Laments at Parting, Nine Lyrical Poems and Sacrificial Songs have won an international fame and occupy an important place in the world's cultural history.

In 1953，the World Peace Council listed Qu Yuan as one of the famous persons commemorated that year in the world．

Wang Zhaojun

Wang Qiang,with courtesy name Zhaojun,was born in Zigui County (today's Xingshan County).In the ruling period of Emperor Yuan, the Han Dynasty,she was sent to the court as an imperial concubine.For some reason,she failed to get into His Majesty's good favour.In the Western Han Dynasty,Han Nationality and Hu Nationality had wars very often.In 33 B.C.,Huhanye,chief of the Southern Xiongnu went to Chang'an (Han's Capital) to ask for a marriage to an imperial woman to achieve peace.Zhaojun asked for imperial permission to become Huhenye's wife. When she came to bid His Majesty farewell,however for the first time,the Emperor realised how beautiful she was. After she got to Xiongnu,she had a son named Yituzhiyashi who was regarded as King Gurisui,she became an empress.

Zhaojun married away from her own country for the unity of various nationalities,so she is regauded as a great woman.People sing high praise for her as the envoy of peace.Because of her marriage Hu and Han nationalities got along well with each other for hundred years.Premier Zhou Enlai once praised her as "a figure who played the greatest role in developing the unity of the great one family of the Chinese nationalities."Mr.Dong Biwu also wrote a poem to praise her saying "her marriage to Huhanye should be praised forever."

Since more than two thousand years ago, poems, stories, pictures,novels,plays about Wang Zhaojun have been widely spread.

Yang Shoujing

Yang Shoujing (1839—1915),with real given name Kaike, proclamatory name Kai,courtesy name Pengyun,literary name Xingwu and the literary name of his later years,Old Man of Linsu,was born in Lucheng Town,Yidu County(today's Yidu City).

Yang Shoujing made a lot of achievements in many fields in his life,especially in geography.He had made a thorough study on the national geography and some other geographical works.He wrote more than 10 books about history and geography and drew 72 maps and pictures about the course of change and development of the past dynasties and he used red and black colour to draw atlases.People sang high praise for his book Textual Research About Geography of the Sui Dynasty and an additional book,Around the World.

Yang shoujing devoted himself to the study of the geographical works Waterways Classic written by Li Daoyuan.He spent all his lifetime using the knowledge of epigraph and archeology to do research for Waterways Classic and to give explanations for it. After several years of researching,Yang Shoujing changed his draft many times and at last he succeeded in writing the monumental work Commentary on the Waterways Classic.The book didn't come out in print before he died.It was only published by the Academy of Sciences in 1957.Later all Yang Shoujing's works (13 volumes) was published by Hubei Provincial People's Press in 1997.

Yang Shoujing was fond of annotating ancient books and he laid stress on textual research of epigraph.Besides these,Yang Shoujing was good at calligraphy.When he was in Japan,many famous scholars visited him and learnt calligraphy from him. In his later years,Yang Shoujing's handwriting gained a high reputation,a lot of people called at his house and asked for his handwriting.He was quite skillful in regular script,Chinese calligraphy, official script and seal character,and he wrote six books,including On Learning Handwriting and Probe the Source of Regular Script.

Yang Shoujing collected hundreds of thousands of books,more than 10,000 of which are the only existing copies. When he was young, he was careful to seek ancient books.When he served as the Chinese ambassador's retinue in Japan,he often wandered in markets.When he found Chinese ancient books that he never saw before,he would always spent all his money buying the books.Soon he collected several tens of thousands of books among which there were valuable copies of the Six Dynasties (222A.D.－589A.D.),the Tang Dynasty and some ancient books of the Song and Yuan Dynasties.In China,some books of this kinds were lost or incomplete.Yang Shoujing selected the essence of the books and copied the sown and finished the book A Series of Ancient Books.
Yang Shoujing set up Lin Su Garden and Book Tower in Huangzhou and Wuchang successively and stored the books that he sought and wrote in the buildings.Besides books,he also stored the inscriptions on ancient bronzes and stone tablets in buildings.He later moved the books to several places.In 1926, his collections were passed on to the Palace Museum.