Huáng Zūnxiàn 黃遵憲
Style name Gōngdù 公度, sobriquet Rénjìnglú zhǔrén 人境廬主人 (“Master of the Rénjìng Studio”). Native of Jiāyìngzhōu 嘉應州 (modern Méizhōu 梅州, Guǎngdōng). Born Dàoguāng 28 (1848); died Guāngxù 31 (1905). CBDB c_personid 65947 confirms the lifedates.
The principal Hakka 客家 / Guǎngdōng public figure of the late-Qīng reform period. Jǔrén of Guāngxù 2 (1876). Diplomatic service in Japan (1877–1882) as Counsellor in the first Chinese mission to Tokyo; later in the United States (San Francisco consul-general 1882–1885); and in England and Singapore (1890–1894). Returned to China for the Hundred Days Reform (Wùxū biànfǎ 戊戌變法) of 1898 as a senior reform figure; survived the post-coup proscriptions in semi-retirement in his native Jiāyìng.
Huáng Zūnxiàn is principally remembered as a poet (his collected Rénjìnglú shīcǎo 人境廬詩草 is one of the foundational works of late-Qīng “new poetry” xīn shī 新詩, integrating modern subject matter and foreign-derived vocabulary into the classical shī form) and as a political theorist (his Rìběn guó zhì 日本國志, a comprehensive 40-juàn study of Meiji Japan, was the principal Chinese-language source on Japanese reform and influential on the 1898 reform programme).
The Qiúyī shù tōngjiě 求一術通解 (KR3fc079) in 4 juàn is Huáng Zūnxiàn’s mathematical work — a treatise on the indigenous Chinese qiúyī shù 求一術 (“seeking-one method,” the indigenous Chinese form of the Chinese Remainder Theorem) developed by 秦九韶 Qín Jiǔsháo in the Shùshū jiǔzhāng 數書九章 (KR3fc008). The work is unusual in his oeuvre as his only substantial mathematical writing, and dates from his earlier jǔrén preparation period before his diplomatic career began.