Kang Youwei

Life

His father was 康達初 and his grandfather 康贊修. He studied under 翁同龢 and was friends with 黃遵憲 and 何藻翔; his brothers included 康有銘 and 康有霈, his wife was 張雲珠, and the kinship record also lists 何旃理 and 梁隨覺 as concubines. His examination record includes the xianggong juren qualification; in 1895 he passed the jinshi examination and was appointed to the Ministry of Works, but did not take up the post.

In the fourteenth year of the Guangxu reign, Kang submitted his first memorial to the Guangxu emperor in support of reform. He later lectured at Wanmu Caotang in Guangzhou, promoted New Text Confucianism, and invoked Confucius and the idea of “reform in the guise of antiquity” to argue for institutional reform. In 1895, after the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, he joined more than 1,300 metropolitan examination candidates in the “公車上書,” demanding rejection of the treaty, the transfer of the capital, resistance to the war, and reform; he subsequently organized the Qiangxue Association and edited and printed 《中外紀聞》.

Summoned by the Guangxu emperor in the twenty-fourth year of the reign, Kang helped bring about the Wuxu Reform, also called the Hundred Days’ Reform. After the Wuxu coup he fled abroad, lived in Hong Kong, Japan, and Europe and the Americas, founded the Baohuanghui, and advocated constitutional monarchy. After the establishment of the Republic he became president of the Confucian Association and opposed democracy and republicanism; in 1917 he cooperated with Zhang Xun in restoring the monarchy and enthroning the Xuantong emperor, but the restoration collapsed after four days.

Thought and writings

Kang’s scholarship centered on New Text Gongyang learning. He was noted for political essays and also wrote poetry; only a small number of his ci poems are said to survive. His works include 《新學偽經考》, 《孔子改制考》, 《萬木草堂叢書》, and 《康南海先生詩集》, while his ci appears in 《全清詞鈔》. In the tenth month of the fifteenth year of the Guangxu reign (1889), he traveled upstream to Wuchang and Hanyang, visited the site of the Yellow Crane Tower, and wrote the regulated verse 《登黃鶴樓》; its line “百戰山川扼勢雄” presents the landscape and conveys concern for the political situation.