Xióng Fán 熊蕃
Late-Northern-Sòng / early-Southern-Sòng scholar and tea-connoisseur, zì Shūmào 叔茂. Native of Jiànyáng 建陽 (Fújiàn) — the same Jiànyáng that produced his more famous son the historian Xióng Kè 熊克 熊克 (1132–1204). Father and son thus form a JiànyángFújiàn scholarly lineage of three generations.
Xióng Fán followed Wáng Ānshí’s 王安石 learning (Wáng’s Xīnxué 新學, the dominant intellectual movement of late Northern Sòng), and was distinguished as a poet (per Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí). His one surviving work, the Xuānhé Beìyuàn gòngchá lù 宣和北苑貢茶錄 (KR3i0022), is the principal Northern-Sòng source for the Xuān-hé-era (1119–1125) imperial-tribute tea industry. The work was composed in his lifetime (probably c. 1120–1135) but only printed in the Chúnxī 9 (1182) revised-edition by his son Xióng Kè, who supplied the 38 woodblock illustrations of the dragon-and-phoenix tea-cake moulds.
Xióng Fán did not hold high office; his career and exact lifedates are not recorded. The work demonstrates intimate familiarity with the Beìyuàn tribute industry — he probably resided in or near Jiànān 建安 (modern Jiànōu, Fújiàn) and personally observed the production. His son Xióng Kè’s promotion of the work was a filial-piety project as much as a scholarly one.