Guowei WangA native of Haining, Zhejiang, he went to Shanghai to work as a proofreader for a newspaper, after failing to pass the Imperial Examination in his hometown, at the age of 22. There he studied in the Dongwen Xueshe, a Japanese language teaching school and became a protégé of Luo Zhenyu. Sponsored by Luo, he left for Japan in 1901, studying natural sciences in Tokyo. Back in China one year later, he began to teach in different colleges, and devoted himself to the study of German idealism. He fled to Japan with Luo when the Xinhai Revolution took place in 1911. He returned to China in 1916, but remained loyal to the overthrown Manchu emperor. In 1924, he was appointed professor by the Tsinghua University, where he was known as one of the Four Great Tutors, along with the prominent Chinese scholars Liang Qichao, Chen Yinke, and Y. R. Chao.In 1927, Wang drowned himself in Kunming Lake in the Summer Palace before the National Revolutionary Army entered Beijing during the Northern Expedition.Chen Yinque's epitaph read: The suicide of Wang was because he worried about losing the independent spirit and free thought he long cherished in his academic pursuit. Read More Read Less