Confucius
During the Song dynasty, the scholar Zhu Xi (AD 1130–1200) added ideas from Daoism and Buddhism into Confucianism. In his life, Zhu Xi was largely ignored, but not long after his death, his ideas became the new orthodox view of what Confucian texts actually meant. Modern historians view Zhu Xi as having created something rather different and call his way of thinking "Neo-Confucianism". Neo-Confucianism held sway in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam until the 19th century.
The works of Confucius were first translated into European languages by Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century during the late Ming dynasty. The first known effort was by Michele Ruggieri, who returned to Italy in 1588 and carried on his translations while residing in Salerno. Matteo Ricci started to report on the thoughts of Confucius, and a team of Jesuits—Prospero Intorcetta, Philippe Couplet, and two others—published a translation of several Confucian works and an overview of Chinese history in Paris in 1687. François Noël, after failing to persuade ClementXI that Chinese veneration of ancestors and Confucius did not constitute idolatry, completed the Confucian canon at Prague in 1711, with more scholarly treatments of the other works and the first translation of the collected works of Mencius. It is thought that such works had considerable importance on European thinkers of the period, particularly among the Deists and other philosophical groups of the Enlightenment who were interested by the integration of the system of morality of Confucius into Western civilization.
Emperor Zhi
Di Zhì () or simply Zhì, was a mythological emperor of ancient China. Di was a title as in HuangDi "Yellow Emperor" and YanDi "Flame Emperor". Zhi was a son of DiKu "Emperor Ku". Di Zhi ruled for nine years (roughly 2366- 2358 BC) until he died and was succeeded by his younger half-brother Yao.
Sima Qian, in the ShiJi (the Records of the Grand Historian), says in its section on the "Annals of the Five Di", that Zhi reigned badly and died, and his brother FangXun, 'the highly meritorious one', then reigned under the title of Di Yao.
The Bamboo Annals says that when Emperor Zhuanxu died, a descendent of Shennong named ShuQe raised a disturbance, but was destroyed by the prince of Sin, who was Ku (GaoXin), a descendant of HuangDi, who then ascended to the throne. In the 45th year, Ku designated the prince of Tang (唐) (his son Yao) as his successor, however upon his death in the 63rd year, his elder son Zhi then took the throne instead, ruling nine years before being deposed and replaced by Yao.