The Sun Boying 孙伯英

Sun Boying (1179-1230) was a figure of the Jin Dynasty. His ancestral home was Rongcheng County in Xiongzhou (now part of Hebei Province), and later he became a resident of Luoyang.

As recorded in The Epitaph of Sun Boying, he was born into a family of military officers. His original name was Bangjie; later he changed it to Tianhe, and after entering official service, he changed his name again to Boying.

When he studied at the Imperial College (Taixue), all his associates were prominent scholars of the time. He was a protégé of Cheng Rixin, who served as Prime Minister. At one point, someone spread malicious rumors, and as a result, Sun Boying and those involved were all implicated in a major lawsuit and imprisoned. Sun Boying narrowly escaped, took refuge with Yin Fuzhi in Shangzhou, and adopted his maternal grandfather’s family name while changing his given name—calling himself Wang Shousu, a Taoist practitioner.

Several years later, he returned home only after an imperial amnesty was declared. Having been trapped in the official career circuit for a long time and further devastated by worldly hardships, he often gave vent to his pent-up frustration—like a caged tiger flying into a rage from restraint.

He grew indifferent to the pleasures and pursuits of the secular world, so he became a Taoist monk (referred to as "Huangguan Shi" in ancient Chinese, a term for Taoist priests). In the 7th year of the Zhengda era (1230), he passed away at the Taiqing Palace in Bozhou at the age of 51.

Accounts of his life can also be found in Volume 6 of Textual Research on the Origin and Development of Changchun Taoism (Changchun Daojiao Yuanliu Kao).