The inspector who took up his reins with the resolve to make the whole empire clear. When the second list came for him he refused to run, and went into the prison-wagon himself.
I would have you learn to be bad — but bad is not to be learned. I would have you learn to be good — and I, who was not bad, am undone by it.Fan Pang's words to his son as he was led out to execution, 169 CE; Hou Han shu, juan 67, Memoir of the Partisan Prohibitions
Appears in
Relations
- Li Ying colleagues — His mother's measure of a good death: she told him he might now die beside Li Ying and owe no shame to Heaven and Earth.
- Du Mi colleagues — Both of the second list's first ranks, both warned to run, both in the prison-wagon by their own decision.
- Zhang Rang enemies — He took up his reins meaning to make the whole empire clean, and the cleanest thing the inner court ever did to him was to write his name on a roll.
Myth vs record
The story you may know
A virtuous martyr of the scholars' cause, killed for recommending the wrong men.
What the sources say
He was an inspector who came into a province with the resolve to clear it and struck at once at the families behind the orders — which is precisely why the orders came for him. The record is not soft about what that cost others: when the second prohibition came for him he was told to go and refused, and the memoir keeps the son, the mother and the prison-wagon in the same scene. His death-year is given as thirty-three, which is why his dates are a subtraction and not a birth record.