Ruì Chángxù 芮長恤
Late-Míng / early-Qing classical scholar and Tōngjiàn gāngmù critic. Original name Chéng 城; zì Yányǐn 巖尹; later changed name to Chángxù; later zì Hāozǐ 蒿子. Native of Lìyáng 溧陽 (modern Jiāngsū). Mid-late Míng zhūshēng (county-school student). Lifedates: birth 1615 per CBDB id 76258; death year unrecorded.
He refused to seek office under the new Qing dynasty after 1644, retiring to private scholarship as a yí mín 遺民. Chén Dǐng’s Liúxī wài zhuàn lists him in the lǐxué (philosophical) section.
His principal surviving work is the Gāngmù fēnzhù shí yí 綱目分註拾遺 (KR2b0021) in 4 juǎn — also known as Gāngmù fēnzhù bǔ yí 綱目分註補遺 (the title under which the Sìkù tíyào treats it). The work systematically restores material from Sīmǎ Guāng’s Tōng jiàn that had been lost in the abridgement of the Gāngmù’s fēn zhù — explicitly demonstrating, point by point, where the Gāngmù’s sub-commentary (largely the work of Zhū Xī’s disciple Zhào Shīyuān 趙師淵, not of Zhū Xī himself) had introduced infidelities. The Sìkù tíyào endorses the analysis and treats Ruì alongside Zhāng Zìxūn (KR2b0020) and Chén Jǐngyún (KR2b0022) as the three principal Qing-period correctors of the Gāngmù. Chén Dǐng’s title for the work was Gāngmù cún yí 綱目存遺 (“preserved residua”), the change of bǔ (補, “to supplement”) to cún (存, “to preserve”) deliberately disguising the implication that Zhū had left anything in need of supplementation — a small instance of school-faction (ménhù) self-protectiveness that the Sìkù editors mocked.