Zhèng Gāngzhōng 鄭剛中
Style name Hēngzhòng 亨仲; posthumous title Zhōngmǐn 忠愍 (“Loyal-and-Mournful”). Native of Jīnhuá 金華 in Wùzhōu 婺州 (modern Zhèjiāng). Lifedates 1088–1154 (Northern through mid-Southern Sòng). The Sòngshǐ (juan 370) gives him a biography.
Jìnshì of 1132 (Shàoxīng 2). Initially advanced through alignment with the chancellor Qín Huì 秦檜’s faction; rose to Lǐbù shìláng 禮部侍郎 (“Vice Minister of Rites”) and was sent as ChuānShǎn xuānfǔ fùshǐ 川陝宣撫副使 (“Vice Pacification Commissioner of Sìchuān-Shaanxi”) in 1143–1147 — a critical western-frontier post under the post-1142 Sòng-Jin peace settlement. The cession of the territory north of the Wèi River to the Jin was managed in part by him, making him, in subsequent moralist-historiographic memory, complicit with the cession-and-appeasement programme.
In 1147 (Shàoxīng 17) Qín Huì turned against him on charges of independent action and unaccountable financial conduct; he was banished to Guìyángjūn 桂陽軍 (Húnán), then progressively further demoted and removed — to Háozhōu 濠州, then to Fùzhōu 復州 (Húběi), finally to Fēngzhōu 封州 (Guǎngdōng) — where he died in 1154, the same year as Qín Huì’s death. Posthumously rehabilitated and canonized.
His sole substantial surviving work:
- [[KR1a0025|Zhōuyì kuīyú]] 周易窺餘 (“Glimpsing the Leftover of the Zhōuyì”) in fifteen juan — composed during his exile years (1147–1154), a programmatic synthesis of Hàn xiàngshù (via Lǐ Dǐngzuò’s Jíjiě KR1a0008), Sòng yìlǐ (via Chéng Yí’s Yīchuān Yìzhuàn KR1a0016), and contemporary Zhū Zhèn’s Hànshàng Yìzhuàn KR1a0024. Programmatically omits Qián and Kūn (and the Xìcí and following) on the principle that the Yì’s deepest heart can only be reached after the rest is mastered. Lost between Sòng and Míng; recovered for the Sìkù from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn.
A separate Southern-Sòng figure 鄭鍔 zì 剛中 (of Sānshān, presented Zhōulǐ quánjiě in the Chúnxī era) is sometimes confused with our author by way of the coincidence between the second figure’s zì and the first figure’s given name; the two are distinct persons.