Talk:Gu Yanwu

This review is transcluded from Talk:Gu Yanwu/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Generalissima (talk · contribs) 10:57, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: ThaesOfereode (talk · contribs) 14:36, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Hello, Generalissima! As usual, you have produced a well-written and interesting work on the history of China. This is a great page and I look forward to getting this to GA status here shortly. I am working my way through the prose now (making minor edits along the way that would otherwise clutter this review). At the end, I will review the lede and the source check. ThaesOfereode (talk) 14:36, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Passim

• married a woman named – This occurs regularly throughout. Presumably this is the surname or am I misreading?

• Women were often referred to by their birth surnames without their personal names being recorded. I was unsure how to note this. I guess I can say "with the surname".-G

• Gu had little contact with his birth parents, and made no mention of them in his works – He goes into mourning due to the death of his biological father, and we know about the wounding and death of his bio mother. How is that squared with the source material and can we telegraph to the reader who may be similarly confused?

• Hmm.. The source says pretty much the same thing, but by "no mention of them" I guess it meant he gave us no information about them. Even though he did not really know his birth parents, he was still obliged to go into mourning for them due to traditional rites. - G

• Can we give a link here for someone like me who is interested in the mourning obligations of the period? I tried to look for one myself and quickly found myself out of my depth. ThaesOfereode (talk) 19:09, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

• There's unfortunately not a very good article to link to. Chinese funerary practices are mostly focused on other things, and Filial mourning is specifically about the time officials took to mourn, which Gu of course was not. -G

• Your use or disuse of Chinese characters can be somewhat confusing. Dai Tingshi has characters, but not the Rizhilu? In general, I think they should be at least used whenever the Chinese transliteration is used instead of a translation, but I'd like to see them in both instances. Names need not be character-ized.

I try to include characters if a name does not have a page on either English Wikipedia or Zhwiki (since it is very difficult to search for information about a given figure without the characters).

Early life

• Can we convert the li to km/mi? If memory serves, I think a li is about half a kilometer.

• It wasn't standardized at this time, but I gave a rough estimate.-G

• Is there a reason he was adopted?

• To become Shaofei's (posthumous) heir. Made this more clear.-G

• later (ostensibly) annual examinations – What is being conveyed by this parenthetical?

• They weren't always annual, but they were meant to be.-G

• changed his name to Gu Jiang – Why? Is there a meaning for this like the change to Yanwu?

• People in imperial China changed their names a lot, often for unclear reasons or simply to mark a new stage in their life. The exact reason isn't listed in the sources. -G

• students of the Classics – Soft recommendation to link Chinese classics here

• Done.-G

• ''[[Twenty-Four Histories|Twenty-One Histories]]'' – ?

• Three of the 24 histories had not yet been written or widely accepted during his time. -G

Career

• his older brother Gu Xiang died – Wait, was Xiang adopted by Shaofei too?

• Biological brother- clarified.-G

• disputed the legitimacy adoption of Gu – This appears ungrammatical

• Clarified.-G

• They attempted to force Gu and Wang to leave the family estate – Probably worth stating whether this was successful or not?

• Done.-G

• killing two of Gu's younger brothers – Bio or adopted?

• Bio - he technically didn't have any adoptive younger brothers, due to being adopted as the heir of a dead teenager -G

• In the sixth month of the year – June? If not, specify the Chinese calendar usage here.

• Done.-G

• Can we get Chinese characters for "A Messenger from Yanping Has Arrived"?

• Done.-G

• Maybe re-evaluate the quotebox here; it kind of looks like Peterson translated this in 1650

• Done.-G

• Soft suggestion to add the original Chinese if possible to the quotebox as a "show" table as is done on Argos (dog) with the corresponding Greek
• [[Purple Mountain (Nanjing)|Shenlie Mountain]] – Is this an older name or something?
  • Yeah. During the Ming it was Shenlieshan/神烈山
• Lu En or Liu En? Both are used.

• Oops, Lu. Fixed.-G

Works

• The first, Guyin biao (古音表). – ?

• Oops, forgot to finish that sentence. Fixed.-G

• Consider translating the book titles in the Yinxue wushu.

• The sources don't give translations and since its somewhat technical classical language I don't want to do it injustice.-G

Philosophy

• What are the characters for lixue? 禮學?

Added.-G

• Gloss fengjian.

Done.-G

• Gloss Tianxia.

Done.-G

• Soft suggestion to link either both a strong central authority and local devolution of power with Federalism or similar, or link local devolution of power with Subsidiarity, Reserved powers, or similar.

• No comment here? Fine with pushback, just want to make sure this is addressed. ThaesOfereode (talk) 19:09, 2 February 2026 (UTC) – Meh, don't worry about it. ThaesOfereode (talk) 19:13, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

• Soft suggestion to gloss the Mandate of Heaven.
• the waves of crises faced by the dynasty during the mid-19th century – Century of humiliation?

• Done.-G

• founding thinkers → founders?

• Done.-G

Overall an excellent read with a lot of great information at hand. Once these are addressed, I will move on to a source review. ThaesOfereode (talk) 16:51, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

• @ThaesOfereode: Thank you so much! Responded. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 15:46, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

  I've made a couple of comments above, but we're in good enough shape to begin the source review, which I will start here shortly. If I didn't respond above, you can just assume we're good to go on it. ThaesOfereode (talk) 19:12, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Image review

• File:Gu yanwu.jpg – US tag needed?

PD-China-1996 includes the US tag. -G

• All other images were taken and uploaded by another editor. Nothing stands out as fishy. Y

Source review

Working off of this dif for numbering purposes. I use RNG to get about 10% of citations so I will review nine and if there are issues re-assess until we have nine citations with no issues. In cases where I have to AGF, I will RNG a citation between the AGF and the following citation to keep a good spread.

• 6 – Y A checks out, but I'm not sure what B is supposed to be confirming?
  • Probably a mistake, removed.-G
• 8 – Y Checks out a number of facts; AGF'ing the other source contains the rest.
• 16 – AGF; 24 chosen in lieu
  • 24 – Y Looks good
• 38 – Y Mostly good, but why is p. 1 cited here? Also, this is copied almost word for word, so it should probably be rephrased a little.
  • Done.-G
• 39 – Y Both check out.
• 43 – AGF; 50 chosen in lieu
  • 52 – Y Checks out, but is there a reason you excluded 彙輯 from the title though? Would make it something like "A Compiled Collection of [...]".
    • Some sources leave that out, but I added it back because there's no real firm reason not to.-G
• 59 – AGF; 62 chosen in lieu
  • 62 – Y Checks out.
• 63 – Y Checks out, but I made a small tweak to the word choice you used.
• 69 – AGF; 75 chosen in lieu
  • 75 – Y Checks out, but I think the article would benefit immensely by pointing out that Gu believed that the centralization of power ultimately undermined central power. Fascinating thought.
    • Okay; made this more explicit earlier in the section.-G

So long as you can either rationalize 6b or remove it, this should pass without another run around. A couple notes after going through the sources though. First, I recommend you move Ku (1983) and Young (1987) to "Further reading" since they are not cited in the main article, unless this was done in error and they need to be cited somewhere. Second, I highly recommend giving the alternative name of the subject in the lede; I know Ku is the older transcription, but given quite a bit of your source material uses that transcription, I think it's important to acknowledge for those less schooled in Chinese. ThaesOfereode (talk) 02:12, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

• Added the W-G transliteration to the lede, and moved those sources to further reading. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 23:47, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

@Generalissima: Not sure if you missed this or not. ThaesOfereode (talk) 21:41, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

• ThaesOfereode Oops, I forgot I forgot any! I think i responded to everything. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 23:47, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

  Looks great. Fantastic work on a fascinating fellow. Happy to promote to GA. Congrats. ThaesOfereode (talk) 01:37, 7 February 2026 (UTC)