Wang Yangming

(born 1472, Yuyao, Zhejiang province, China—died 1529, Nanen, Jiangxi) Chinese scholar and official whose idealistic interpretation of Neo-Confucianism influenced philosophical thinking in East Asia for centuries. The son of a high government official, he was both a secretary to the Ministry of War and a lecturer on Confucianism by 1505. The next year, he was banished to a post in remote Guizhou, where hardship and solitude led him to focus on philosophy. He concluded that investigation of the principles of things should occur within the mind rather than through actual objects and that knowledge and action are codependent. Named governor of southern Jiangxi in 1516, he suppressed several rebellions and implemented governmental, social, and educational reform. By the time he was appointed war minister (1521), his followers numbered in the hundreds. His philosophy spread across China for 150 years and greatly influenced Japanese thought during that time. From 1584 he was offered sacrifice in the Confucian temple under the h1 Wencheng (“Completion of Culture”).

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(born 45 BC, China—died Oct. 6, AD 23, Chang'an) Founder of the short-lived Xin dynasty (AD 9–25), an interlude between the two halves of the Han dynasty in China. Wang's family was well connected to the Han imperial family, and in 8 BC Wang was appointed regent, only to lose the position when the emperor died. When the new emperor died in 1 BC, Wang was reappointed regent and married his daughter to the subsequent emperor, Ping, who died in AD 6. Wang picked the youngest of more than 50 eligible heirs to follow Ping and was named acting emperor. In AD 9 he ascended the throne and proclaimed the Xin dynasty. His dynasty might have endured had the Huang He (Yellow River) not changed course twice before AD 11, causing massive devastation and attendant famines, epidemics, and social unrest. Peasants banded together in ever larger units. In AD 23 rebel forces set the capital, Chang'an (modern Xi'an), on fire, forced their way into the palace, and killed him.

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(born May 4, 1883, Sanshui, Guangdong province, China—died Nov. 10, 1944, Nagoya, Japan) Chinese Nationalist Party figure, later head of the puppet regime established by the Japanese in 1940 to govern their conquests in China. A leading polemicist for Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary party, in 1910 he tried to assassinate the imperial regent and was caught; his courage in the face of execution resulted in his sentence being reduced. He was released the following year, after the republican revolution. In the 1920s he served as a major official in the Nationalist Party. After Sun's death, he chaired the party while Chiang Kai-shek allied with the communists in the Northern Expedition against China's warlords. Chiang and Wang vied for party control; in a compromise in 1932, Wang became president and Chiang headed the military. After war erupted with Japan, Wang flew to Hanoi, Viet., and issued a statement calling on the Chinese to stop resisting. In 1940, in collaboration with the Japanese, he became head of a regime that governed the Japanese-occupied areas centred on Nanjing. Though Wang had hoped to be granted virtual autonomy, the Japanese continued to exercise military and economic dominance. He died while undergoing medical treatment in Japan.

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(born 1021, Linchuan, Jiangsu province, China—died 1086, Jiangning, Jiangsu) Chinese poet and government reformer of the Song dynasty. His “New Policies” of 1069–76 sparked academic controversy that continued for centuries. He created a fund for agricultural loans to farmers to spare them the exorbitant demands of moneylenders; he also replaced corvée labour with a hired-service system financed by a graduated tax levied on all families. He enabled officials to purchase supplies at the cheapest price in the most convenient market. He established a village militia system (see baojia), reorganized the Hanlin Academy, and restructured the civil service examinations. Wang's reforms were unpopular, and he was forced to resign in 1074. He returned to government in 1075, but with less political power. After the emperor's death an antireform clique came to power and dismantled Wang's reforms by the time of his death shortly afterward. Seealso Fan Zhongyen.

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Name

• Wang (surname), one of two surnames with distinct Chinese characters
• Titles in Chinese nobility
• A title in Korean nobility

Companies

• Wang Laboratories, an American computer company
• Wang Film Productions

Geography

• Wang River in Thailand
• Wang Township, Minnesota, a township in the United States
• Wang, Bavaria, a town in the district of Freising, Bavaria, Germany
• Wang, Austria, a town in the district of Scheibbs in Lower Austria
• An abbreviation for the town of Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia

Languages

• Slang for a penis
• UK to throw. eg. Wang a rock through a window.

Others

• Wang (Tibetan Buddhism) a tantric empowerment
• Sidney Wang, a character in Murder By Death
• WANG-FM, a former set of call letters for WRQR in Havelock, North Carolina

See also

• Hwang
• Wong
• Wang Chung (disambiguation page)