Yamin XU
As a founding father of the school of Evidential Inquiry, Gu Yanwu abandoned the approaches of the Song and Ming neo-Confucianists and replaced them with a strong emphasis on scholarly textual criticism favored by Han dynasty scholars. Gu opened the path to a renaissance of studying the ancient Chinese classics, as well as advancing practical studies to deal with specific problems that China faced.
Gu Yanwu was a great scholar during the