Page:A Chinese Biographical Dictionary.djvu/234

Rh contribution to their dowry. Arriving at his home, he reported all this to his father who at once approved of what he had done.

  Fan Chung-yen 范仲淹 (T. 希文). A.D. 989-1052. A native of the Wu District in Kiangsu. When three years of age, his father died and his mother married a man named 朱 Chu, under which name he grew up to manhood. About 1012 he graduated as chin shih, and entering upon an official career reverted to his own family name. He became Governor of Yen-an in Shensi, and proved a most successful administrator. He was popularly known as 小范老子 to distinguish him from 大范老子, or 范雍 Fan Yung, who had also been Governor of Yen-an. Under the Emperor Jen Tsung he was advanced to high office; but at length he fell a victim to slander, and was banished to Jao-chou in Kiangsi. When the Tartars invaded the eastern portion of the empire, he was once more summoned to play a leading part, and operated against them with such skill and success that peace and order were restored. His name was coupled with that of Han Ch'i, as striking terror into the hearts of the western rebels. He was noted for his filial piety; and when his mother's second husband died, he received her into his home and tended her until death. He was an opponent of Buddhism and the supernatural in general, declaring that he could not believe in anything he could not see. "Nevertheless," cried an adversary, "you believe in what your pulse tells you as to the state of your bodily health, although you cannot see the conditions thus indicated!" He was canonised as 文正, and the Emperor wrote his epitaph; and in 1715 his tablet was placed in the Confucian Temple.

  Fan Ch'ung 樊崇. A brigand chief, who ravaged north-western China about A.D. 30. He and his soldiers all dyed their eyebrows red, in order to inspire terror, and he himself adopted the name 