active 150 B.C. Ying Han

Han Ying, active around 150 B.C., was a scholar of the early Han dynasty and a noted interpreter of the Classic of Songs (Shijing). Traditional reference works describe him as a Confucian scholar, and later catalogues consistently connect his name with the Hanshi waizhuan, often translated as Illustrations of the Didactic Application of the Classic of Songs.

That book is the reason he is still read today. Rather than offering only line-by-line commentary, it gathers anecdotes, moral examples, and reflections that show how poetry could be applied to conduct, government, and everyday judgment. The result feels less like a dry scholastic text and more like a collection of stories built to teach.

Very little biographical detail seems firmly established in the sources I found, so it is safest to remember him through his influence: he helped shape one important Han-era way of reading the Confucian classics, with literature serving as a guide to ethics as well as learning.