KUNG TZU-CHEN

born Aug. 22, 1792, Hang-chou, Chekiang Province, China died Sept. 26, 1841, Nanking also called Kung Ting-an, Pinyin Gong Zizhen, or Gong Dingan, courtesy name (WadeGiles romanization) Se-jen, or Erh-y a reform-minded Chinese writer and poet whose works both foreshadowed and influenced the modernization movements of the late Ch'ing dynasty. Born into an eminent family of scholars and officials, Kung passed the state examinations and succeeded to a series of metropolitan posts in the Ch'ing administration. Concern over the Ch'ing failure to deal adequately with Western pressures and internal problems led Kung in 1830 to join other progressives like Lin Tse-hs, later a key official in the Opium War with Britain, in founding a literary club to agitate for reform. Although his many essays on reform issues had great impact on later reform intellectuals like K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, they were ill-received in the conservative Ch'ing councils of the time. Thus, Kung retired in disillusionment to a life of private letters in 1839. Famed chiefly as a prose stylist, Kung was also a master of lyrical tz'u poetry and published several verse collections, most notably his Chi-hai tsa-shih (1839; Miscellaneous Verse).