Wang Hsien-ch'ien (6 August 1842-8 January 1918), scholar, educator, and government official. He was best known for his monumental compilations, including the Han-shu pu-chu [supplementary notes to the Han-shu] and the Hou-Han-shu pu-chu.
The third son in an impoverished gentry family, Wang Hsien-ch'ien was born in Changsha, Hunan. He became a sheng-yüan in 1857 and passed the chü-jen examination in 1864, having in the meantime served as secretary to a commander of river flotillas at Wuchang and at Anking, Anhwei. In 1866 he became a chinshih and thus began a career of service to the Ch'ing court which extended to 1888. In 1881 he received the signal honor of appointment as president of the Kuo-tzu-chien or Imperial Academy.
In 1885 Wang went to Chiangyin, Kiangsu, to serve as provincial director of education. There he also headed the Nanching Academy, which he put on a sound financial basis by acquiring more than 50,000 mou of reclaimed swamp land. The revenues from this land kept the school going until the Second World War. At the Nanching Academy, Wang was associated with a number of illustrious scholars, including Miao Ch'uan-sun (q.v.).
As an official, Wang was noted for both his probity and his scholarship, and during his last decade of public service he acquired a reputation as a fearless remonstrant of imperial abuse. In 1881 he memorialized the court in criticism of Hsu Chih-ming's handling of the belligerent Muslims of Yunnan. In 1885 he boldly submitted a memorial urging the discontinuance of construction work on the pleasure lakes in the Forbidden City, a cherished project of the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi (ECCP, I, 295-300), who was diverting a large proportion of the naval appropriation to this end. In 1888 he again memorialized the throne, asking that the powerful eunuch Li Lien-ying (ECCP, I, 298) be placed under strict surveillance. This last remonstrance, an audacious affront to the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi, caused fear for his safety among Wang's friends but won him fame and sympathy throughout China. It also hastened his retirement. He left government service the same year to devote himself to scholarship and teaching in his native province. As a retired official, Wang first taught at the Ssu-hsien School, an institution founded by Kuo Sung-t'ao (ECCP, I, 438-39) in honor of Wang Fu-chih (ECCP, II, 817-19). There he established a printing concern, financed from surpluses in the local salt sales. In 1889 Wang left the school for the Ch'eng-nan Academy, where he remained until 1894. He spent the next decade at the Yueh-lu Academy, leaving when it was converted into a modernized normal school. Thereafter Wang confined his activities to private scholarship, although in 1907 he did receive the purely honorary title of president of the bureau of educational affairs in Hunan.
Wang held no political post of substance after 1888 but remained politically active as a widely respected "elder statesman" of pronouncedly conservative views. In 1897, at the height of the reform movement in Hunan sponsored by Ch'en Pao-chen (ECCP, II, 703), Wang publicly demanded suspension of the Hsiang-hsueh-pao, the organ of the Hunan reformers. During that period he also had his disciple, Su Yu (d. 1914), compile the I-chiao ts'ung-pien, [collected works to defend China's civilization], a repository of polemical materials useful for the discomfiture of the reformers. In 1904-5 Wang was a leader in the successful movement to nullify a contract signed by the Hunan provincial government with an American company to build a railway linking Hankow and Canton through Hunan. In 1910 Wang played his last scene on the political stage, again in opposition to the Hunan provincial government. For a number of years Hunan had suffered crop failures, in the course of which Wang had repeatedly suggested to the provincial authorities that supplies of grain should be kept at hand in granaries for use during emergencies. His advice, however, was not heeded, and no action was taken. In April 1910 a hungry and disorderly mob rioted at Changsha and burned the governor's palace. Alarmed civic leaders jointly petitioned the governor general in Wuchang, charging that the Hunan governor was directly responsible for the disturbance and demanding his immediate dismissal. Wang's name somehow found its way to the top of the list of signers. As a result and upon the recommendation of the governor general, Jui-chang (ECCP, I, 128), Wang was deprived of his residual honors and ordered cashiered from the civil service. Subsequent attempts by Wang to establish his innocence and restore his titles failed, and he died a private citizen eight years later, on 8 January 1918, at Changsha.
The abiding import of Wang's life is to be found, however, not so much in his political activity as in his works of scholarship. In breadth of learning and in organizational capacity he may be compared with the greatest Chinese scholars of the eighteenth century, the heyday of Han-hsueh, or textual research. His work divides itself conveniently into four categories : historical, classical, and literary scholarship, and polemical and other writings including his own literary efforts. His Tung-hua-lu, and the companion compilation, Tung-huahsü-lu, based on the shih-lu, or "veritable records," stored in the Bureau of National History, remain among the most important primary sources for the study of Ch'ing history from its inception to the middle of the nineteenth century. His most monumental contribution to historical scholarship and what is generally considered his greatest work is the Han-shu pu-chu [supplementary notes to the Han-shu], in 100 chüan, published in 1900. The book synthesizes the findings of 47 earlier works in defining each phrase or term in the Han-shu, normally concluding with Wang's own comments. A similar work for the Hou-Han-shu, entitled Hou-Han-shu pu-chu, appeared in 1915, but is generally less valued than the earlier work. In both enterprises Wang was assisted by Su Yü.
Wang was also active in bringing together important collections of traditional literature. In 1882 in continuation of the Ku-wen-tz'u leitsuan [classified compilation of ancient literature] by the eighteenth-century scholar Yao Nai (ECCP, II, 900-1), Wang compiled the Hsu ku-wen-tz'u lei-tsuan, which included samples of the work of 38 scholars of the post-Ch'ienlung (1736-1795) period. Although the work was intended to glorify the achievements of the conservative T'ung-ch'eng school, of which Yao Nai was a leading figure, Wang's anthology included several essays by writers of the rival and less rigidly orthodox Yang-hu school, a circumstance which aroused much unfavorable criticism of Wang at the time of publication. In_1889 he produced the Shih-chia ssu-liu wencKao [selected rhyme-prose of the "Ten Geniuses"], a collection of rhyme-prose by master writers mostly of the nineteenth century with a preface by Wang in the same style. In 1900, in collaboration with Su Yü, he completed his Lü-fu lei-tsuan [anthology of metrical fu] and followed this a year later with another anthology of rhyme-prose, P'ien-wen lei-tsuan. As a classicist and editor, Wang also made important contributions to Chinese scholarship. One of the best editions of classical texts extant had Wang as its editor in chief. The works he edited include the Shih-shuo hsin-yü and the Yen-t'ieh-lun, both published in 1891, the Hsün-tzu chi-chih of 1901, and the Chuang-tzu chi-chih of 1909. In 1907 he published a collection of his correspondence on questions of the day under the title Hsü-shou-t'ang shu-cha. His literary works were collected under the title Hsü-shou-t''ang wen-chi, and his poetry as Hsüshou-t'ang shih-ts'un.
