Yáng Fāng 陽枋 (1187–1267), zì Zōngjì 宗驥, originally named Chāngcháo 昌朝, sobriquet Zìxī 字溪 (“Word-Creek”) after his hermitage above the Xiǎolóngtán 小龍潭 in Bāchuān 巴川 (modern Tóngnán 潼南 county, Chóngqìng 重慶). A late-Southern-Sòng scholar of the ZhūXī 朱熹 school in the third generation, via the Sìchuān teachers Dù Zhèng 度正 and Zhǎn Yuān 㬊淵.
Career. In Duānpíng 端平 1 (1234) Yáng stood at the head of the Sìchuān regional examination (xiāngxuǎn 鄉選). In Chúnyòu 淳祐 4 (1244), with the Mongol invasions making proper jìnshì examinations in Shǔ 蜀 impracticable, he was exempted by special imperial dispensation and, after a personal audience, granted equivalent jìnshì status (cì tóng jìnshì chūshēn 賜同進士出身). Recruited in turn by frontier-staff commanders, he held a string of practical posts on the wartime western frontier: wine-and-tax supervisor at Chāngzhōu 昌州, administrative aide (lǐyuàn 理椽) at Dàníng 大寧, and instructor (xuéguān 學官) at Shàoqìng 紹慶. Late in life, owing to the promotion of his son Yáng Yánmǎo 陽炎夘, he was honoured with the rank of Cháofèngdàfū 朝奉大夫 in retirement, and died at age eighty-one.
Scholarly identity. Yáng was a transmitter of the ZhūXī tradition specifically as it had developed in Sìchuān through Dù Zhèng (one of Zhū Xī’s principal southern-Sòng pupils) and Zhǎn Yuān. His Yìxiàng túshuō 易象圖説, preserved in the Zìxī jí, draws on guàqì 卦氣 and nàjiǎ 納甲 methods that diverge in part from Zhū Xī’s Běnyì 本義; the Sìkù editors trace this to his transmission via Zhǎn Yuān (whose oral instruction is itself a recognized variant). His late piece on the Qǐméng xiǎozhuàn 啟䝉小傳, debating Shuì Yǔquán 税與權, shows his sustained engagement with the Yìjīng to the end of his life.
Sources. Yáng’s career is not recorded in the dynastic histories — the Sòngshǐ 宋史 contains no biography. The principal sources are his son’s xíngzhuàng 行狀 and niánpǔ 年譜, both appended to the WYG Zìxī jí (KR4d0361), and the SòngYuán xuéàn 宋元學案 juàn 80 (the LùshānHúshì xuéàn and adjacent cases on the DùZhèng school). CBDB 27800 confirms 1187–1267.
Works in the Kanripo corpus. KR4d0361 Zìxī jí 字溪集, 11 juàn + 1 appendix.