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Hong Ru

Chinese courtier

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2024
Entity authorityQ5895719 ↗
Source-derived summary

Hong Ru (閎孺) (also Hong Yu, Hong Jiru) (fl. c. 190 BCE) was the favorite companion of the Chinese Emperor Hui of Han. He and the emperor were also reputed to possibly be lovers.

Hong Ru had much influence with the emperor, and his dress and cosmetics were imitated by other courtiers in an attempt to impress the emperor. These noblemen began wearing feathers in their hats, powdering their faces, and dangling sea shells from their clothes. Hong Yu was documented by China's Grand Historian Sima Qian.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hong Ru” as chinese courtier. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 87-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Hong, Chinese and courtier can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as chinese courtier. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q5895719. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. 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

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Hong Ru”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Hong Ru primary sources, Hong Ru archive and Hong research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Hong Ru”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Hong Ru” 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.