Tang Long

Life

His grandfather was Tang Xian; his father's name appears as Tang Xue or Tang Huangyu. In his youth he studied under Zhang Mao, a fellow native of the same county.

He passed the Xinyou provincial examination in Zhejiang in 1501, earned the jinshi degree in 1508, and was appointed magistrate of Tancheng in Shandong. In 1511, the Liu Liu–Liu Qi uprising spread across several provinces; Tang repeatedly resisted Liu Liu's attacks and left office to observe mourning after his father's death.

After completing mourning, he was appointed investigating censor, serving first in Yunnan and later in Jiangxi. In a case involving Qian Ning, he arrested and punished one of Qian's subordinates when the man tried to mediate. After Shizong's accession in 1521, he became Shaanxi educational vice commissioner in the seventh month; in 1526 he was transferred to Shanxi as surveillance commissioner, and in the twelfth month of 1527 he was summoned as minister of the Court of Imperial Stud.

In 1528 he was promoted to right assistant censor-in-chief, while supervising grain transport and concurrently governing the Fengyang prefectures; in 1529 he became right vice censor-in-chief, in 1530 vice minister of personnel, and in 1531 left vice minister of personnel.

The beginning of his tenure as Minister of War and governor-general of the Three Border Regions is dated either to 1531 or to 1532. During a major famine in Shaanxi, with 吉囊 massing troops on the frontier and Yan-sui under threat, he supervised relief and, with Wang Xiao and Liang Zhen, repeatedly defeated the enemy. In 1535 he was summoned as Minister of Justice and proposed amnesty for 140 military exiles eligible for pardon; all but 豐熙, 楊慎, 王元正, 馬錄, 呂經, 馮恩, 劉濟, and 邵經邦 were released. In 1537 he received the additional title of Taizi Shaobao.

In the fourth month of the seventeenth Jiajing year, he requested retirement to care for his aged mother. In 1544 he was recalled as Minister of Justice in Nanjing and, later that year, transferred to the Nanjing Ministry of Personnel; the following year he returned as Minister of War, concurrently took charge of the metropolitan military camps, received the additional title of Taizi Taibao after completion of the imperial temple, and in the twelfth month replaced Xiong Jie as Minister of Personnel. By then old and ill, he consulted his assistants on every matter and was repeatedly deceived by them; after becoming entangled in the Gao Jian case, he sought retirement on grounds of illness but was ultimately dismissed as a commoner.

He died in the seventh month of 1546. One tradition places his place of death in Beijing, while another says that he died on the way home; several years later, his son, the Hanlin compiler Tang Ruji, submitted a memorial in his defense, after which the court restored his offices, posthumously granted him Shaobao, and gave him the posthumous name Wenxiang.

Literary work and associations

Tang Long was a poet especially accomplished in five-character verse. His works included the four-volume 《漁石集》, 《黔南集》, 《江右集》, 《關中集》, and 《晉陽集》; he also wrote 《比部招議類鈔》.

《漁石集》 was edited by Cai Zimu. Tang Long's prose was praised for its breadth and force, and his poetry for its command of five-character verse. Critics further said that his five-character poetry took Shaoling as its model and had reached the threshold of mastery, while his regulated verse was incisive and vigorous enough to rank him among the masters.

In literary exchange, Tang Long wrote prefaces for works by Wang Yunfeng and Zheng Guan; Huang Shengzeng, Kang Hai, and Zhao Shichun wrote prefaces for 《漁石集》, while Xu Jie composed his epitaph.