Lü Meng
Lü Meng was from Fupo County (富陂縣), Runan Commandery (汝南郡), which is located southeast of present-day Funan County, Anhui. His family migrated to the south of the Yangtze River when Lü Meng was young. Lü Meng lived with his brother-in-law, Deng Dang (鄧當), who served as a military officer under Sun Ce. When he was 14 or 15, he secretly followed Deng Dang to the battles against the Shanyue tribes. Deng Dang was shocked to see his teenage brother-in-law in battle, so he scolded Lü Meng and warned him to stop. Lü Meng refused to listen so Deng Dang told Lü Meng's mother about this. When she wanted to punish him, Lü Meng said: "It is difficult to survive in poverty. If we can prove ourselves through hard work, then wealth will come eventually. How can we catch the tiger cub if we don't enter the tiger's den?" Lü Meng's mother sighed and let him have his way.
Jiang Qing (Confucian)
Jiang Qing was born October 1, 1953 in Guiyang to a relatively affluent family. As a child, he had a passion for Chinese poetry and classical literature. The political situation at the time drove him to undertake studies of Marxism and human rights theories of the West during his university years. Later on, perplexed by China’s political reality, he studied both eastern and western religion. Eventually, he studied New Confucianism, which on the one hand advocates the mind philosophy and self-cultivation, and on the other hand tries to fit Confucian ideologies into the framework of Western liberal democracy. Given his deep appreciation and knowledge of the classics, especially the Gongyang Zhuan commentary, and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he was determined to find a solution for China’s struggles. He believed that an embrace of Western ideas, especially democratic politics, liberty, and equality, is not suitable for China’s development. This brought about his criticism of the New Confucianism, and his plan for China, which involved drawing on its own long-standing metaphysical moral and political values, as well as national identity, all of which are fundamentally different from Western ideologies. He also founded the Yangming Academy (), a Confucian-based educational institution in 1996.