Ruan Yuan (1764–1849), was a scholar official in the Qing Dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

 in Imperial China. He won jinshi (high) honors in the imperial examinations

Imperial examination

The Imperial examination was an examination system in Imperial China designed to select the best administrative officials for the state's bureaucracy. This system had a huge influence on both society and culture in Imperial China and was directly responsible for the creation of a class of...

 in 1789 and was subsequently appointed to the Hanlin Academy

Hanlin Academy

The Hanlin Academy was an academic and administrative institution founded in the eighth century Tang dynasty China by Emperor Xuanzong.Membership in the academy was confined to an elite group of scholars, who performed secretarial and literary tasks for the court. One of its main duties was to...

. He was famous for his work Biographies of Astronomers and Mathematicians and for his editing the Shi san jing zhu shu

Shi san jing zhu shu

The Shi san jing zhu shu is a famous Qing dynasty collection, edited by the scholar Ruan Yuan of the Thirteen Classics of Chinese literature, comparing many editions of each book, together with scholars' commentaries on the books. Ruan Yuan's version, considered the most careful, was originally...

 (Commentaries and Notes on the Thirteen Classics) for the Qing emperor.

Ruan Yuan was a successful official as well as a scholar. He was the governor, the most important imperial official, of Guangdong

Guangdong

Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...

 province during the critical years 1817-1826, just before the First Opium War

First Opium War

The First Anglo-Chinese War , known popularly as the First Opium War or simply the Opium War, was fought between the United Kingdom and the Qing Dynasty of China over their conflicting viewpoints on diplomatic relations, trade, and the administration of justice...

 with Britain. It was a critical time when Chinese trade with the outside world was allowed only through the Canton System

Canton System

The Canton System served as a means for China to control trade with the west within its own country. Seen from the European view, it was a complement to the Old China Trade.-History:...

, with all foreigners confined to Guangzhou

Guangzhou

Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...

 (Canton), the capital of Guangdong.

Ruan Yuan was widely recognized as an official, scholar, and patron of learning both by his contemporaries and by modern scholars. He was also praised as an honest official and an exemplary man of the ‘Confucian persuasion’. His name is mentioned in almost all works on Qing history or Chinese classics because of the wide range of his research and publications. A number of these publications are still being reprinted today. Ruan Yuan was a follower of the Han Learning

Han learning

Han Learning , or the Han school of classical philology, was an intellectual movement that reached its height in the mid-Qing dynasty in China.-Nature and origins:...

 tradition.

Sources

Ruan Yuan, 1764-1849: The Life And Work of a Major Scholar-Official in Nineteenth-Century China Before the Opium War, Betty Peh-T’i Wei, 2006; ISBN 9622097855)

External links

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Peh_T%E2%80%99i_Wei
• http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Printonly/Ruan_Yuan.html
• http://www.seeraa.com/china-spirituality/ruanyuan.html
• *http://books.google.com/books?id=8lxUMoR5TXcC&dq=Ruan+Yuan+1764-1849:+The+Life+and+Work+of+a+Major+Scholar+in+China+before+the+Opium+War&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=W_zBBfA36k&sig=t4lnuNpqGvfK8CXtppwi2hgukGg&hl=en&ei=0_UGSsjOEozCM7OEhaMD&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q&f=falseRuan Yuan, 1764-1849: The Life And Work of a Major Scholar-Official in Nineteenth-Century China Before the Opium War, Betty Peh-T’i Wei, 2006; ISBN 9622097855]