Yangming Retreat

　　The Yangming Retreat is situated by Yingpanshan Reservoir in Longchang Town, Xiuwen County, approximately 6 kilometers from the county town. Spanning over 200 acres, it was funded with more than 800,000 yuan by Jiang Qing, a renowned domestic and international scholar of Wang Yangming’s philosophy and professor at the Shenzhen Administrative College. Construction began in 1996 and took over five years to complete. The retreat includes a Yangming orchard of over 150 acres, as well as more than ten classical-style buildings such as Xingtian Garden, Sisheng Garden, and Fengyuan Tower. The four characters “Yangming Retreat” on the main gate were inscribed by Fujita Takehiko, an internationally esteemed scholar of Yangming studies and honorary professor at Kyushu University in Japan. To date, scholars from Japan, Korea, Canada, as well as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Beijing, Shanghai, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces and municipalities in China, totaling several hundred individuals, have come to the retreat for academic discussions. The Yangming Retreat provides an excellent venue for scholars of Wang Yangming's philosophy to study and contemplate, while also embodying the philosophical concept of "the unity of heaven and humanity" and Mr. Yangming’s spiritual pursuit of “the unity of all things in benevolence.” Mr. Jiang Qing’s dedication in establishing the retreat for in-depth study and dissemination of Wang Yangming’s teachings is highly respectable and admirable.

　　Wang Shouren (1472~1529)　　Wang Shouren (1472–1529), a philosopher of the Ming Dynasty in China, was the synthesizer of the idealist school of the Mind. His courtesy name was Bo’an, and his pseudonym was Yangming. He was a native of Yuyao, Zhejiang. A renowned thinker, litterateur, philosopher, and military strategist of the Ming Dynasty, he was the culminating figure of the Lu-Wang School of Mind, proficient in Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Wang Shouren is ranked alongside Confucius, Mencius, and Zhu Xi as one of the greats—Confucius, Mencius, Zhu, and Wang. His doctrine, known as the School of Yangming (or Wang Yangming’s Philosophy), was the most influential philosophical thought of the Ming Dynasty. His academic ideas spread to China, Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and Southeast Asia. He achieved distinction both in moral character and scholarship, surpassing all others of the Ming era. He had numerous disciples and founded what came to be known as the Yaojiang School. His writings are broad and... More+