Wáng Zhēng 王徵
Late-Míng Confucian scholar, jìnshì, mechanical-engineer, and one of the most learned Chinese converts to Catholicism of the first generation. Native of Jīngyáng 涇陽 (Shǎnxī), zì Liángfǔ 良甫, hào Kuíxīn 葵心 and Liǎoyī Dàorén 了一道人 (after his conversion); also self-styled Zhīlí Sǒu 支離叟 in later life. Baptised Philip / Filippo around 1616 by Nicolas Trigault 金尼閣 in Beijing, taking the Christian name Fēilǐbó 斐理伯.
Wáng came late to the jìnshì degree, passing in the Tiānqǐrénxū year (1622) at age fifty-one after nine prior attempts at the huìshì. He served as a tuīguān 推官 (judicial-officer) of Yángzhōu prefecture, then magistrate-equivalent of Guǎngpíng 廣平 (Zhílì) and Línjì 臨洮 (Shǎnxī). In 1631 he was made liáodōng jiānjūn 遼東監軍 (military overseer for the Liáodōng front) under the Chóngzhēn emperor’s frantic late attempts to stem the Manchu advance. He retired to Jīngyáng in his last years. When Lǐ Zìchéng’s 李自成 rebel armies took Xī’ān in 1644 and the Míng dynasty fell, Wáng — refusing to serve the new regime — fasted to death in the Lúshān Mountains, age seventy-three.
His scientific output was almost entirely produced during his short Beijing years (1622–1625), in collaboration with the Jesuits — most importantly Schreck (Terrentius, 鄧玉函). The masterwork is the Yuǎnxī qíqì túshuō lùzuì 遠西奇器圖說錄最 (KR3i0001) of 1627, the first systematic Chinese exposition of European Renaissance mechanical engineering — gears, levers, pulleys, screws, hydraulic machinery, and lifting / pumping / milling devices — based on Schreck’s oral translation from Vitruvius, Agostino Ramelli, Jacques Besson, and Simon Stevin. To this Wáng appended his own Zhūqì túshuō 諸器圖說 1卷, presenting eleven machines of his own invention or modification.
Wáng’s other significant works include the Lǐbǐmíng zhèngmì 畏天愛人極論 (1628, devotional), the Liǎnglǐ luè 兩理略, and a partial translation with Trigault of Aesop’s fables (the Kuàngyì 況義). His Catholic faith and his Confucian scholar’s standing make him, alongside Lǐ Zhīzǎo 李之藻, Xú Guāngqǐ 徐光啟, and Yáng Tíngyún 楊廷筠, one of the “Three Pillars plus one” of late-Ming Chinese Catholicism. He is the focus of substantial recent scholarship; the standard biography is Huáng Yīnóng 黃一農’s Liǎngtóu shé 兩頭蛇 (Tsinghua UP, 2005) chapter on Wáng.