谭嗣同 (Tánsìtóng): Tan Sitong (1865–1898), late Qing reformer and thinker, executed as one of the Six Gentlemen of the 1898 Hundred Days' Reform (戊戌六君子)

When the 1898 戊戌变法 (Hundred Days' Reform) collapsed under Empress Dowager Cixi's coup, Tan refused to flee, saying 各国变法，无不从流血而成，今日中国未闻有因变法而流血者，此国之所以不昌也 ('no country has achieved reform without bloodshed; let me be the first in China'). His philosophical work 《仁学》 (On Benevolence) fused Confucian, Buddhist, and Western ideas.