Gu Hongming

Gu Hongming (Chinese: 辜鴻銘; Wade-Giles: Ku Hung-ming; Pinyin: Gǔ Hóngmíng; courtesy name: Hongming; ordinary name: 湯生 in Chinese or Tomson in English) (18 July 1857 – 30 April 1928) was a Malaysian Chinese man of letters. He also used the pen name "Amoy Ku".

Gu Hongming was born in Penang, Malaysia, the second son of a Chinese rubber plantation superintendent, whose ancestral hometown was Tong'an, Fujian province, China, and his Portuguese wife. The British plantation owner was fond of Gu and took him, at age ten, to Scotland for his education. He was then known as Hong Beng (the Min Nan pronunciation of 鴻銘 Hongming). In 1873 he began studying Literature at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in the spring of 1877 with an M.A. He then earned a diploma in Civil Engineering at the University of Leipzig, and studied law in Paris.

He returned to Penang in 1880, and soon joined the colonial Singapore civil service, where he worked until 1883. He went to China in 1885, and served as an advisor to the ranking official Zhang Zhidong for twenty years.

Leo Tolstoy and Gu were both opposed to the Hundred Days' Reform led by Kang Youwei.

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