Fenggan
Chinese poet and monk
Fenggan (simplified Chinese: 丰干; traditional Chinese: 豐干; pinyin: Fēnggān; Wade–Giles: Fengkan; lit. 'Big Stick', Japanese Bukan, fl. 9th century) was a Chinese Chan monk-poet lived in the Tang dynasty, associated with Hanshan and Shide in the famed "Tiantai Trio" (天台三聖).
Biography
Legendarily, Feng appeared one day at Guoqing Temple (located by the East China Sea, in the Tiantai mountain range), a 6-foot-tall (1.8 m) monk with an unshaven head, riding a tiger. From then on, he took up residence in the temple behind the library, where he would hull rice and chant sutras.
The few accounts of him record that he became close friends to Hanshan, and was the one who found the orphaned Shide, named him, and brought him to the temple. From these and other anecdotes, it appears that Feng was the oldest of the three.
The circumstances of his death are as murky as his life: the stories in which Feng is any more than a name or foil for Hanshan cease after he healed a local prefect. It has been conjectured that Hanshan's Poem 50 refers to his death:
Show me the person who doesn't die;
death remains impartial.
I recall a towering man
who is now a pile of dust-
the World Below knows no dawn
plants enjoy another spring
but those who visit this sorrowful place
the pine wind slays with grief.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Fenggan” as chinese poet and monk. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as chinese poet and monk. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q618915. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Fenggan”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Fenggan primary sources, Fenggan archive and Fenggan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Fenggan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.