Xiāo Chǔ 蕭楚
Style name Zǐjīng 子荊. Native of Lúlíng 廬陵 (modern Jí’ān 吉安, Jiāngxī). Northern-Sòng / Southern-Sòng transition Chūnqiū scholar; principal teacher of the great Southern-Sòng anti-appeasement polemicist Hú Quán 胡銓 (1102–1180). Lifedates 1064–1130, given by the Sòng shǐ rúlín zhuàn (juan 459) and the SKQS tíyào on KR1e0027. CBDB id 13192.
In the Shàoshèng 紹聖 era (1094–1098) Xiāo went to the Tàixué 太學 and was forwarded to the Lǐbù 禮部 jìnshì examination but failed. At the time Cài Jīng 蔡京 (1047–1126) was rising to dominance under Sòng Huīzōng. Xiāo, perceiving that Cài’s policies would be disastrous, made the famous prediction that “Cài will be Sòng’s Wáng Mǎng” 蔡京且將為宋王莽 — and refused to seek office for the rest of his life. The Jìngkāng 靖康 catastrophe of 1127, a generation after his prediction, was widely regarded as confirming his judgement.
Xiāo retired to Lúlíng and devoted himself to Chūnqiū studies. His pupils included Zhào Yáng 趙暘, Féng Xiè 馮澥, and most importantly Hú Quán 胡銓, who came to study with him after taking the jìnshì. The famous master–disciple anecdote preserved in Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiětí and reproduced in the SKQS tíyào — Xiāo’s instruction to Hú Quán that “a scholar studies not merely to take a jì (examination rank); the body may be killed, the learning cannot be insulted; do not be the ruin of my Chūnqiū” — became one of the locus-classicus statements of Sòng-period Confucian intellectual transmission. Hú Quán’s Wú gē shū 戊戌書 (1138) demanding the execution of the appeasement chancellor Qín Guì 秦檜 (1090–1155) was framed in Chūnqiū-praise-and-blame language directly traceable to Xiāo’s hermeneutic.
His principal work is the Chūnqiū biàn yí 春秋辨疑 (KR1e0027), originally circulated under the titles Chūnqiū jīng biàn 春秋經辨 and Chūnqiū jīng jiě 春秋經解 (10 juan per the Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì). The original 49 essays survive partly (44 essays, in 4 juan as recovered from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn).
Died in the fourth year of Jiànyán 建炎 (1130), in his sixty-seventh year.