Yan Yuan 1635 – 1704

Yan Yuan, known as Yan Xizhai, was a Chinese Confucian philosopher of the early Qing dynasty and a sharp critic of the Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucian establishment of his time. He held that the long emphasis on quiet meditation and book learning had drained the Confucian tradition of its original practical orientation, and called for a return to the six classical arts of ritual, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and arithmetic as the proper substance of Confucian education. His school of practice, transmitted through his pupil Li Gong, exerted a small but real influence on the later Qing critique of Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy.