Chén Lǐ 陳澧
Style name Lánfǔ 蘭甫, studio-name Dōngshú 東塾 (whence his celebrated Dōngshú dúshū jì 東塾讀書記). Native of Pānyú 番禺 (Guǎngzhōu / Canton). Born Jiāqìng 15 (1810); died Guāngxù 8 (1882). CBDB c_personid 54955 (Qing dynasty), with full lifedates entered. Two homonymous CBDB entries (458758, 512153) carry no dates and clearly do not match.
The leading Cantonese HànSòng synthesist of the late Qīng — one of the most influential Chinese intellectual figures of the nineteenth century, and the founder-spirit of the Xuéhǎitáng 學海堂 academic tradition in Canton (he served as senior teacher 學長 at the academy from Dàoguāng 20 / 1840 onward, and as the de facto director from the 1850s through his death). His Dōngshú dúshū jì 東塾讀書記, in 21 juàn (with three further juàn in supplement), is one of the great Qīng intellectual-history monographs, surveying the major schools of Chinese learning (the Yì, the Shū, the Shī, the Sānlǐ, the Chūnqiū, the Xiàojīng, the Lùnyǔ, Mèngzǐ, the Han classicists, etc.) with the explicit aim of healing the Qīng HànSòng polemical breach.
His scholarly range was very wide — historical phonology (Qiēyùn kǎo 切韻考 in 6 juàn, the foundational Qīng study of the SuíTáng rime-table tradition), the Shēngyùnxué 聲韻學, the Hàn shū “Lǜlì zhì”, the Zhōulǐ, music theory, and ancient mathematical astronomy. The present catalog preserves his Sāntǒngshù xiángshuō 三統術詳說 in 5 juàn (KR3fb024), the standard late-Qīng exegesis of Liú Xīn’s 劉歆 Hàn calendar.
A native and lifelong resident of Canton, Chén Lǐ was a key conduit through which the late-Qīng Xuéhǎitáng tradition shaped the early modern Chinese academic imagination — Liáng Qǐchāo 梁啟超 and Kang Yǒuwéi 康有為 both bear his stamp, even where they diverged from him. His Dōngshú jí 東塾集 (collected literary writings) and Dōngshú xùjí 東塾續集 are widely available in modern editions.