The Chinese statesman Fan Chung-yen (989-1052) initiated the first important Sung reform program. He was famous for defining the ideal Confucian scholar as "one who is first in worrying about the world's troubles and last in enjoying its pleasures."

Fan Chung-yen was born into an old scholar-official family of modest importance which had settled in Soochow in the 9th century. When Fan's father died in 990, his mother remarried and took her infant son along to her new home in Shantung, where he was given the new family surname, Chu. At the age of 21 he was shocked to learn of his true father's identity and left the Chu family. In 1017 he received official permission to resume his original surname. Intense family feeling remained a strong motive force throughout Fan's life, as exemplified by the well-known charitable estate he later established for the Fan clan.

After study in Ying-t'ien, Honan...