Biography
Family Background and Early Years
Chen Fan came from an official family; his grandfather had served as governor of Hedong. Chen began his career in the commandery, was later recommended as Filial and Incorrupt, and received appointment as a Gentleman. After his mother died he resigned to observe mourning. When mourning ended, inspector Zhou Jing summoned him as an aide, but Chen quarreled with Zhou because of his direct remonstrance and left office. He thereafter refused repeated summons from the highest offices and recommendations as Upright and Correct. Only after Grand Commandant Li Gu recommended him by memorial did Chen accept appointment as a Consultant, and he was later promoted to governor of Le'an.
Chen was ambitious from youth. According to the *Book of the Later Han*, at age fifteen he lived by himself in a room while the courtyard outside remained overgrown and unswept. His father's friend Xue Qin asked why he did not clean the yard to receive guests. Chen replied: “When a great man lives in the world, he should sweep clean the realm. Why concern himself with one room?” Xue Qin was astonished by his ambition to purify the empire. The later saying about not sweeping a room but aspiring to sweep the realm became a famous expression encouraging scholars to concern themselves with affairs under Heaven.
Early Official Career and Upright Conduct
When Chen served as governor of Le'an, Li Ying was inspector of Qingzhou and governed with great severity. Officials in the subordinate cities, fearing Li, asked to leave their posts; Chen alone was retained because of his clean administration. The commandery resident Zhou Qiu maintained a reputation for independence and had refused the invitations of previous governors, but he accepted Chen's invitation. Chen addressed him by courtesy name rather than personal name as a mark of respect and kept a special couch for him; when Zhou left, Chen suspended the couch and did not use it for other visitors.
A local man named Zhao Xuan buried a parent but left the tomb passage open and lived in the tomb in mourning for more than twenty years. The community praised his filial conduct and local authorities repeatedly honored him. Chen questioned him about his wife and children and learned that all five of Zhao's children had been born while he was supposedly living in mourning at the grave. Enraged, Chen argued that ritual rules were meant to be observed by the virtuous and at least attempted by ordinary people; excessive ritual display became irreverent. He condemned Zhao for living in a tomb, fathering children there, deceiving society, seeking false fame, misleading the public, and insulting the spirits, and punished him. The episode illustrates Chen's hostility to hypocritical display.
Conflict with Powerful Men and Repeated Rise and Fall
General-in-Chief Liang Ji, then overwhelmingly powerful, sent a messenger to Chen with a private request. Unable to secure an audience, the messenger used a pretext to gain access. Chen angrily had him whipped to death, and for this was punished and demoted to magistrate of Xiuwu. After gradually recovering rank, he became a Master of Writing. At the time, bandit uprisings occurred in Lingling and Guiyang and senior officials discussed sending an army. Emperor Huan also ordered provinces and commanderies to make emergency recommendations for Filial and Incorrupt and Flourishing Talent candidates. Chen memorialized against the plan. He argued that the inhabitants of the two commanderies were the emperor's children, that disorder had arisen because local officials were corrupt and brutal, and that the Three Excellencies should be made to review inspectors, governors, magistrates, and chiefs and replace them with clean and capable men rather than trouble the imperial army. The memorial angered people close to Emperor Huan, and Chen was sent out as governor of Yuzhang.
Chen was grave and upright in manner and rarely received guests; officials and commoners respected and feared his austere reputation. When summoned back as Prefect of the Masters of Writing, those seeing him off did not dare accompany him beyond the outer city gate. In 159 he was promoted to Grand Herald. When Li Yun, magistrate of Baima, submitted a direct memorial and Emperor Huan sought to execute him, Chen memorialized in Li's defense and was dismissed and sent home. He was soon recalled as a Consultant and within days promoted to Minister of the Household.
Among the Nine Ministers and as Grand Commandant
As Minister of the Household, Chen saw titles being granted beyond proper limits and palace favorites growing in influence. He remonstrated with Emperor Huan, invoking the precedent that Emperor Gaozu had not allowed men without merit to receive marquisates. He criticized the revival of hereditary titles and rewards to attendants without merit, which he linked to cosmic disorder. He also argued that recent taxation had ruined more than half the populace while thousands of palace women consumed vast resources. Emperor Huan accepted part of his advice and released more than five hundred palace women.
In 163 Emperor Huan went hunting at Guangcheng Park. Chen memorialized that the empire suffered the danger of “three emptinesses”—empty fields, an empty court, and empty granaries—while warfare continued and the realm was fragmented. This, he argued, was a time for anxious vigilance rather than displays of martial splendor and indulgence in carriages and horses. Emperor Huan did not accept the remonstrance.
While Minister of the Household, Chen and Huang Wan, General of the Household for All Purposes, jointly supervised official selection and refused to favor powerful families. Sons of great houses falsely accused them, and Chen was dismissed. He was later restored as Vice Director of the Masters of Writing and transferred to Grand Master of the Palace. In 165 he succeeded Yang Bing as Grand Commandant. Chen tried to decline, saying he was inferior to Hu Guang, Wang Chang, and even the pardoned convict Li Ying, but Emperor Huan refused his resignation.
Resistance during the Partisan Prohibitions
After palace attendants Su Kang and Guan Ba returned to power, they attacked loyal officials. Minister of Agriculture Liu You, Minister of Justice Feng Gun, and Metropolitan Governor Li Ying were punished after opposing imperial wishes. At a court audience Chen forcefully pleaded for Li Ying and the others, repeatedly remonstrating with such earnestness that, when Emperor Huan would not listen, Chen rose in tears and left.
Minor eunuch Zhao Jin and the Nanyang strongman Zhang Si abused their influence and committed crimes. Governors Liu Zhi of Taiyuan and Cheng Jin of Nanyang investigated and executed them. Eunuchs sought revenge, and officials memorialized that the two governors deserved execution in the marketplace. Governor Zhai Chao of Shanyang had confiscated the property of palace attendant Hou Lan, while Huang Fu, chancellor of Donghai, executed Xuan Xu, magistrate of Xiapi; both officials were sentenced to penal shaving and the cangue. Chen, together with Minister over the Masses Liu Ju and Minister of Works Liu Mao, urged Emperor Huan to pardon them. The emperor grew angry and Liu Ju and Liu Mao fell silent. Chen alone continued with a memorial declaring that disorder within the court was the state’s most dangerous internal illness and urging the emperor to remember the difficulty of the ancestors' founding work and not indulge eunuch power. Emperor Huan rejected his advice.
In 166 the first of the Disasters of the Partisan Prohibitions broke out and Li Ying and others were falsely accused by eunuchs and imprisoned. When the order passed through the offices of the Three Excellencies, Chen refused to countersign it on the ground that the charges had not been clearly stated. Emperor Huan angrily ordered Li Ying and the others taken directly to the Northern Temple Prison of the Yellow Gates. Chen again remonstrated in extreme terms. Emperor Huan dismissed him as Grand Commandant, formally accusing him of improper recruitment of personnel.
Grand Tutor and the Plot against the Eunuchs
In 167 Emperor Huan died and Empress Dou assumed court authority. Because Chen had earlier strongly supported her selection as empress, Empress Dowager Dou appointed him Grand Tutor and placed him in charge of the affairs of the Masters of Writing. The next year Emperor Ling ascended the throne and the empress dowager ordered Chen enfeoffed as Marquis of Gaoyang Village. Chen firmly refused the title and never accepted it.
Chen governed jointly with General-in-Chief Dou Wu. They recruited prominent scholars and talented men, leading literati throughout the realm to hope for a return of good government. Palace attendants Cao Jie and Wang Fu, however, allied with Emperor Ling's wet nurse Zhao Rao, won the empress dowager's confidence, and allowed their relatives and clients to abuse power. Chen and Dou Wu together planned to eliminate the eunuchs. Dou urged Empress Dowager Dou to support a general purge. She did not agree to kill them all. Guan Ba and Su Kang were eliminated, but she continued to hesitate over Cao Jie and the rest. Chen also memorialized the empress dowager in support of the plan, but she did not accept his proposal, and the conspiracy remained unresolved.
Failure of the Plot and Death
On a xinhai day in the ninth month of the first year of the Jianning era, October 25, 168, a memorial prepared by Dou Wu requesting the execution of the eunuchs was stolen and the secret plan was exposed. Cao Jie and the other eunuchs acted first, threatened officials of the Masters of Writing with weapons, forged imperial orders, and mobilized troops against Dou Wu. When Chen learned of the crisis, he led more than eighty subordinate officials and students with drawn swords through Chengming Gate, shouting that the General-in-Chief was loyally defending the state and that the eunuchs were the true rebels. Wang Fu brought troops and denounced Chen for supporting the partisans and ordered his arrest. Chen drew his sword and cursed Wang Fu; troops initially dared not approach. Wang added many layers of soldiers around him and eventually seized Chen and sent him to the Northern Temple Prison. On the road eunuchs kicked and abused him, taunting the “dead old demon” and asking whether he could still reduce their numbers or take away their salaries. Chen was killed in prison that day at more than seventy years of age. His household was exiled to Bijing, and members of his clan, students, and former subordinates were dismissed and barred from office.
Posthumous Rehabilitation
During the Yellow Turban Rebellion, Emperor Ling lifted the general partisan prohibitions, but Chen Fan and others were still not rehabilitated. In the ninth month of 189, Dong Zhuo joined Minister over the Masses Huang Wan and Minister of Works Yang Biao in a memorial requesting rehabilitation for Chen, Dou Wu, and the partisans killed in the second Partisan Prohibition. Emperor Xian approved the request, restored their titles, and promoted their descendants to office.
Chen Fan's tomb is in present-day Pingyu County, Henan. In 2008 the Henan provincial government listed it as a protected cultural heritage site at the provincial level. A Chen Fan Park was also established, containing a statue of Chen and a monument to the Grand Tutor.