The Tang Xianzu Memorial Hall in Fuzhou is a comprehensive cultural venue built to commemorate Tang Xianzu, one of the world’s hundred great cultural figures and a master of Ming‑dynasty drama in China. It is also one of Jiangxi Province’s ten major memorial halls dedicated to historical luminaries.
Tang Xianzu’s Story | Bidding Farewell by the Banks of the Xujiang River
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2023-10-18
Farewell to the banks of the Xujiang River 
The mountain breeze blows in gusts, and the river flows slowly. By the banks of the Xu River at the foot of Gushan Mountain, Tang Xianzu, having just completed his studies, bade farewell to his esteemed teacher, Luo Rufang. “Master, I must depart—please do not linger.”
This poem is brief and straightforward, conveying to Tang Xianzu the wish that his conduct be as pure as jade. Another poem is “Tang Yiren Reads with His Aunt—A Gift”:
You dwell within the Celestial Cave, your spirit soaring as if on the brink of immortality.
I composed three hundred poems, drinking deep from the jade-cold spring.
This poem, likewise brief and straightforward, looks back on Tang Xianzu’s experiences while studying at Cugu Mountain.
Tang Xianzu understood why Luo Rufang had asked him to read the text again on the journey; had they read it face to face, how deeply moved and sorrowful master and disciple would have been. At that moment, with the river flowing gently and the mountains lingering in their gentle forms, Tang Xianzu, armed with a wealth of learning, stepped into the vast currents of nature and the course of life, setting forth with high spirits amid the poignant ache of parting.
If Xu Liangfu’s influence on Tang Xianzu was chiefly literary and rooted in his upright, principled character, then Luo Rufang’s impact was primarily in the realm of intellectual synthesis and the formation of Tang’s conception of “qing” (emotion). It was precisely Luo Rufang’s Neo‑Confucian system—centered on the “heart of the child,” the idea that “restraining desire is not the same as cultivating benevolence,” and the principle of “unceasing vitality”—that Tang Xianzu further developed into his own views: “the world is ultimately governed by emotion,” “emotion has reason but no fixed form,” and a doctrine of “prioritizing emotion.” As Tang Xianzu himself put it, regarding Luo Rufang, “his influence was ever present in my heart and mind!”
In the ninth month of the sixteenth year of the Wanli reign (1588), Luo Rufang passed away on Congushan. Thereafter, Tang Xianzu—whether on his way to exile and passing by Congushan, accompanying friends on a journey, or deliberately returning to revisit old haunts—paid his respects to Luo Rufang on numerous occasions, leaving behind poems and prose in commemoration.
At Gushan, the names of two eminent predecessors—Tang Xianzu and Luo Rufang—are inscribed, commemorating a touching bond between teacher and student.
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