Wáng Yī 王禕
Style name Zǐchōng 子充, hào Huáchuān 華川, posthumous canonization Zhōngwén 忠文. Native of Yìwū 義烏 in Jīnhuá 金華 prefecture (modern Zhèjiāng). The character of his given name is technically 褘 (with the yī 衣 radical, matching his brothers 裕 and 補), but the form 禕 (with the shì 示 radical) is the conventional one in printed catalogs and is followed in the Kanripo metadata.
Pupil of the Jīnhuá-school eminences Liǔ Guàn 柳貫 and Huáng Jìn 黃溍; lifelong intellectual partner of Sòng Lián 宋濂 (1310–1381). After the founding of the Míng (1368) the new emperor Hóngwǔ Tàizǔ 太祖 appointed him to the Hànlín, and he and Sòng Lián were named co-Chief Compilers (zǒngcái 總裁) of the official Yuánshǐ 元史. He also kept the imperial Qǐjūzhù 起居注 (Diary of Activity and Repose). Sent in 1372 as imperial envoy to the holdout Yúnnán court of Liángwáng Bǎzālāwǎrmí 把匝剌瓦爾密 (the last Yuán imperial-clan prince), he refused to recant his loyalty to the Míng and was executed there in early 1374 (Hóngwǔ 6, 12th month — 1373 by the lunar-year reckoning, January–February 1374 by Julian).
Major surviving works: the historical-chronicle Dàshìjì xùbiān 大事記續編 (continuation of Lǚ Zǔqiān’s Dàshìjì); the Wáng Zhōngwéngōng jí 王忠文公集 (collected writings); the Huáchuān jí 華川集. He also produced the 2-juan abridgment of Zhào Yǒuqīn’s Géxiàng xīnshū — the Chóngxiū Géxiàng xīnshū 重修革象新書 (KR3f0004) — preserving the work’s main astronomical and optical content while pruning what he judged to be its prolix or vulgar passages.