Early Life
Zhang Tianxi was born in 346, the same year that his father Zhang Jun died, and it is not known whether he was born before or after his father's death. His mother was Zhang Jun's concubine Lady Liu (but see her article on confusion about his mother's identity).
Not much is known about Zhang Tianxi's early life other than that in 354, when his older brother Zhang Zuo formally broke away from Jin, Zhang Zuo created him the Marquess of Changning. Sometime either during Zhang Zuo's reign or that of his nephew Zhang Xuanjing, who became ruler after the violent and arbitrary Zhang Zuo was overthrown in 355, Zhang Tianxi visited the Jin capital Jiankang, and it was this time that his non-standard, three-character courtesy name Gongchungu was apparently joked about, so he dropped the initial character "Gong" and made it Chungu.
Read more about this topic: Zhang Tianxi
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Innocence is lovely in the child, because in harmony with its nature; but our path in life is not backward but onward, and virtue can never be the offspring of mere innocence. If we are to progress in the knowledge of good, we must also progress in the knowledge of evil. Every experience of evil brings its own temptation and according to the degree in which the evil is recognized and the temptations resisted, will be the value of the character into which the individual will develop.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)