Xú Fāng 徐枋 (1622–1694), zì Zhāofǎ 昭法, hào Sìzhāi 俟齋 (“Studio of the Awaiter”) and Qínyúshānrén 秦餘山人 (“Recluse of Mount Qínyú”), of Chángzhōu 長洲 (Sūzhōu prefecture, Jiāngsū). CBDB id 62862; lifedates firm.
The most famously withdrawn of the Sūzhōu yímín (Míng-loyalist hold-outs). Son of 徐汧 Xú Qiān (1597–1645), Shàozhān shì-rank Hànlín official under the late Míng (posthumously canonized Wénjìng 文靖 by the Lóngwǔ Southern-Míng), who threw himself into Yúshān lake in Chángshú at the news of Sūzhōu’s fall to the Manchus in 1645. Xú Fāng was then 24 suì; he vowed to die with his father, was prevented by his elders, and instead bound himself never to enter a city or accept any service. For the first twenty years of the Qīng (1645–1665) he did not enter Sūzhōu city; for the second twenty (1665–1685) he did not leave the gate of his hut at Tiānpíng 天平 mountain. He thus spent forty years in unbroken withdrawal.
The self-preface to the Sìzhāi wén jí (subsequently retitled the Jūyìtáng jí 居易堂集 KR4f0021 when edited posthumously by his disciple Pān Lěi 潘耒) is one of the great early-Qīng yímín documents: Xú compresses forty years of withdrawal into a single self-justification. The collection circulated in manuscript in the late 17th century, was first printed by Pān Lěi in the early Kāngxī, and survives in the Republican-era SBCK edition supplemented by 王大隆 Wáng Dàlóng’s jíwài shīwén recovery of poems and prose not in the original 20-juan recension.
Beyond his Míng-loyalist identity, Xú Fāng was also a painter of considerable distinction — his landscape paintings, characterized by sparse brushwork and ascetic composition, are preserved in Sūzhōu collections — and a substantial bǐjì writer (the Cǎocǎo lǘ 草草廬 bǐjì survives in fragments).