张英

Zhang Ying is best remembered for the 'Six-Foot Lane' (六尺巷) anecdote: when his family in Tongcheng wrote to him in Beijing complaining about a land dispute with neighbors, he replied with the verse 千里修书只为墙,让他三尺又何妨 ('A letter from a thousand li away just for a wall — what harm in yielding three feet?'). Both families then yielded three feet, creating a lane still preserved today.

His son Zhang Tingyu (张廷玉) became an even more powerful Qing statesman, serving Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong — making the Zhangs of Tongcheng (桐城张氏) one of the most celebrated official families of the Qing.