Huang K'an T. Chi-kang m Huang K'an (1886-8 October 1935), philologist and poet, noted for his studies of the Wen-hsin tiao-lung of Liu Hsieh and the Jih-chih-lu of Ku Yen-wu.

Ch'ich'un, Hupeh, was the birthplace of Huang K'an. He was the youngest son of Huang Yun-ku, the salt and tea intendant, and later the acting judicial commissioner, of Szechwan province. He died when Huang K'an was 13 sui. Little is known about Huang K'an's childhood. At about the age of 20, he was interviewed by Chang Chih-tung (ECCP, I, 27-32), then the governor general of Hupeh and Hunan, and Chang sent him to study in Japan. Huang soon met Chang Ping-lin (q.v.). who had assumed the editorship of the Alin-pao [people's journal] in Japan. Huang became one of Chang's pupils and wrote anti-Manchu articles for his paper under the name Yun-pi. After the establishment of the republic in 1912, Huang K'an returned to China and served briefly as secretary general to Chao Ping-chün (1865-1914). After Chao's death in February 1914, Huang was invited to teach at National Peking University, where he subsequently became a follower of Liu Shih-p'ei (q.v.). During the May Fourth Movement of 1919, he resigned from Peking University to protest the policies advocated by the movement's leaders, Ch'en Tu-hsiu and Hu Shih (qq.v.), and went to Wuchang to teach at the Normal College. In 1927 Wang Tung, who also had been a student of Chang Ping-lin, became chairman of the department of Chinese at National Southeastern (later Central) University in Nanking and persuaded Huang to join his teaching staff. Huang remained at the university until his death in October 1935. Huang K'an's chief scholarly contributions were made in the field of philology. He held that there were no third or fourth tones in ancient Chinese phonetics and that there should be no fewer than 72 basic sounds in modern phonetics. Among Huang's major works in this field was Chi-yun sheng-lei piao (published in 1936), a study of the noted eleventh-century phonetic dictionary Chi-yun. Another important study was his Wen-hsin tiao-lung cha-chi (published in 1934) dealing with the Wen-hsin tiao-lung, a famous work on literary criticism by Liu Hsieh. Huang's work contained 20 essays in which he corrected many of the errors made by Huang Shu-lin (ECC'P, I, 344-45) in his popular edition of the Wen-hsin tiao-lung. In Wen-hsin tiao-lung Huang-chu pu-cheng, Huang quoted notes written by Sun I-jang (ECCP, II, 677-79) and Li Hsiang (ECCP, II, 782). Huang's work was expanded by his pupil Fan Wen-Ian (q.v.) into the Wen-hsin tiao-lung chu [annotations on the Wen-hsin tiao-lung'], which was published in 1925.

Huang K'an devoted considerable attention to the text of the Jih-chih-lu of Ku Yen-wu (ECCP, I, 421-26). Although a standard edition of the Jih-chih-lu had been prepared and printed in 1695 by P'an Lei (ECCP, II, 606-7), Chang Ping-lin had long suspected the existence of a variant manuscript version of this work. In 1931 Chang Chi (q.v.) discovered a rare copy of the Jih-chih-lu, possibly dating from the early years of the Ch'ing dynasty, which contained more entries than the P'an Lei edition and which observed the taboo rules in such a way as to indicate that the author was a loyal subject of the Ming dynasty. After obtaining this manuscript, Huang compared the texts of the two editions and compiled the Jih-chih-lu chiao-chi (published in 1933), in which he noted the alterations made in the P'an Lei version. Other writings of Huang K'an were collected by his students in Nanking and published in 1937 as the Huang hsien-sheng chi-nien tie.

Like Chang Ping-lin, Huang K'an was known for his quick temper. Once, while teaching at Peking University, he is said to have threatened his colleague Ch'en Han-chang (b. 1874) with violence during a dispute over a philological interpretation. The two men later became good friends and, as members of the same literary club, exchanged poems.

In his poetry, Huang was said to have followed the style of Wang K'ai-yun (q.v.), which, in turn, had been influenced strongly by the thirdcentury poets of the Wei-Chin period. Three small collections of Huang K'an's verse were published: Hsi-ch'iu-hua-shih, including poems written between 1906 and 1915; Shih-ch'iao chi; and Yu Lung-shan shih, a collection of 37 poems with a preface by Chang Ping-lin, which appeared in 1927.