Rǎn Yōng 冉雍
Style name Zhòng Gōng 仲弓. One of Confucius’s (孔子 Kǒngzǐ) most highly regarded disciples, conventionally born c. 522 BCE (no death year is reliably recorded). CBDB records him as id 275130 but without birth or death years. He is counted among the ten foremost disciples (shí zhé 十哲) in the Confucian tradition and appears prominently in the Lúnyǔ 論語. His native state is given as Lǔ 魯 in most sources.
In the Lúnyǔ, Confucius praises Rǎn Yōng highly: “Yōng could sit facing south” (6.1), a phrase indicating his fitness to rule, and elsewhere calls him humanely virtuous but says he is “not fluent in speech” (6.6) — an ironic counterpoint to his later reputation as a skilled governor. The Lúnyǔ (13.2) records the moment when Rǎn Yōng was appointed steward (zǎi 宰) by the Jì 季 clan of Lǔ and consulted Confucius, who advised him to “first [attend to] his subordinate officials, pardon minor errors, and promote the worthy and capable” — a passage directly paralleled by the Shanghai Museum bamboo manuscript KR2p0167. The Shǐjì (Zhòngní dìzǐ lièzhuàn, ch. 67) gives his surname as Rǎn 冉 and style name Zhòng Gōng 仲弓, states he was six years younger than Confucius (i.e., born c. 522 BCE), and says his father was a man of low moral character — which Confucius addressed by declaring that “a fine ox calf born of a ploughed ox, even if one tries not to use it for sacrifice, would the mountains and rivers reject it?” (《論語》6.6). He belongs to the school of virtuous conduct (dé xíng 德行) among Confucius’s disciples.