The Character of Guiyan——the Biography of Xing Nanrong

This book is the first full-length historical biographical novel with Xing Nanrong, a sage from Gao'an, Jiangxi Province in the Tang Dynasty, as the protagonist. Xing Nanrong (746-819) was a Jinshi in the ninth year of Zhenyuan of the Tang Dynasty. He served as an official in the Imperial Academy and served as a guest of the prince. In his later years, he returned to his hometown and founded Guiyan Academy, establishing a private teaching style in Jiangyou. The novel takes Xing Nanrong's seventy-four-year life as its sutra and the political changes in the mid-Tang Dynasty as its latitude. It details the complete life trajectory of a poor scholar from a young man in Hongcheng to the Wild Goose Pagoda, from asking for orders in times of danger to returning to seclusion to study. The work vividly depicts his solitary character who did not involve himself in party strife in government, his educational sentiments of spending money to establish schools in the opposition, and his deep friendship with Liu Zongyuan, Liu Yuxi and others. The whole book uses "Guiyan" as the spiritual image, which is not only a hymn to the longevity of teachers, but also a magnificent picture of the spiritual map of scholars in the mid-Tang Dynasty.