Wú Chéng or Wu Ch'eng (1249 – 1333) (),

courtesy name A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.Ulrich Theo ...

s Yòuqīng () and Bóqīng (), studio names Yīwúshānrén () and Caolu Xiansheng (草廬先生; lit. "Mr. Grass Hut"), was a scholar, educator, and poet who lived in the late

Song dynasty The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the res ...

and

Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fif ...

. He was one of the most influential Neo-Confucian thinkers in those eras, and his influence continued to be prominent in the Ming and Qing periods. Wu Cheng was born in 1249 in Fuzhou, Jiangxi, into a poor family with a scholarly heritage. His early training was in the Zhu Xi (1130-1200) lineage, but he was also exposed to the idea of harmonizing the Zhu Xi teachings with those of Lu Xiangshan (1139-1193), and he also had an affinity for southern Daoism. This synthetic tendency was apparent in Wu’s later writings and exerted an influence on the development of ''xinxue'' 心學 (the School of the Mind and Heart) in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) eras. He died in 1333. Failing to pass the ''

jinshi ''Jinshi'' () was the highest and final degree in the imperial examination in Imperial China. The examination was usually taken in the imperial capital in the palace, and was also called the Metropolitan Exam. Recipients are sometimes refer ...

'' examination just prior to the invasion of Jiangxi by the Mongols, Wu supported the resistance forces of Wen Tianxiang (1236-1283). After the takeover, educators in the capital tried unsuccessfully to recruit him to serve the Yuan and instead disseminated his classical commentaries. He refused local appointments, but in 1309 he served in the Directorate of Education in Dadu (Beijing), leaving in 1312 over differences with those reinstituting the examination system, which had been defunct since the Mongol takeover. Wu had wished to broaden the classical curriculum beyond Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the

Four Books The Four Books and Five Classics () are the authoritative books of Confucianism, written in China before 300 BCE. The Four Books and the Five Classics are the most important classics of Chinese Confucianism. Four Books The Four Books () are C ...

and proposed models that challenged the prevailing plan. In the 1320s he also served in the Historical Bureau in the capital. Among Wu Cheng's contributions, there is a famous condemnation of the divination practice as described in the "Great Plan" (''Hongfan'' 洪範) section of the '' Book of Documents'', a classic for which he provided an alternative organization to the orthodox arrangement. According to him, Jizi, a virtuous relative of the last king of the Shang dynasty who was punished for remonstrating with the king, and who was responsible for the transmission of the teaching about divination prevailing among the opinions of nobles and ordinary people, was under the sway of

Shang dynasty The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty founded by Tang of Shang (Cheng Tang) that ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty a ...

superstitions. The matter is discussed in

Bernhard Karlgren Klas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren (; 15 October 1889 – 20 October 1978) was a Swedish sinologist and linguist who pioneered the study of Chinese historical phonology using modern comparative methods. In the early 20th century, Karlgren conducte ...

's commentaries on the "Great Plan" (Nylan, 1992:169). Wu wrote original and critical commentaries on almost all of the classics, and the '' Dao de jing'', but his greatest achievements were philosophical, in discussing the limits on human understanding of ideas like '' taiji'' (the Great Ultimate), and in emphasizing the need to crystallize moral truths within oneself (''ningdao'' 凝道). His attempt to synthesize the ideas of Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan led him into adopting Lu’s ideas on interiority, thus anticipating the development of the Neo-Confucian School of Mind in the Ming and Qing eras. As a successful and popular teacher, Wu had many students over his long life, and it was as a mentor and inspiration to them that he made his greatest impact as a scholar in the Yuan era.

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