His philological works include Wen Shi , the first systematic work of Chinese etymology. He also made contributions to historical Chinese phonology, proposing that "the niang and ri come from the ni initial " . He developed a system of shorthands based on the seal script, called jiyin zimu , later adopted as the basis of zhuyin. Though innovative in many ways, he was skeptical of new archaeological findings, regarding the oracle bones as forgery.
An activist as well as a scholar, he produced a great amount of political works. Because of his outspoken character, he was jailed for three years by the and put under house arrest for another three by Yuan Shikai.
Life
Zhang was born with the given name Xuecheng in Yuhang, Zhejiang to a scholarly family. Later he himself changed his given name to Jiang with the sobriquet Taiyan, to show his admiration for the early Qing scholar and activist Gu Yanwu. When he was 23, he began to study under the great philologist Yu Yue , immersing himself in the Chinese classics for seven years.
After the , he came to Shanghai, becoming a member of the Society for National Strengthening and writing for a number of newspaper, including Liang Qichao's Shi Wu Bao . In September 1898, after the failure of the Wuxu Reform, Zhang escaped to Taiwan with the help of a Japanese friend and worked as a reporter for Taiwan Riri Xinbao and wrote for Qing Yi Bao produced in Japan by Liang Qichao.
In May of the following year, Zhang went to Japan and was introduced to Sun Yat-sen by Liang Qichao. He returned to China two months later to be a reporter for the Shanghai-based Yadong Shibao , and later published his most important political work, Qiu Shu .
In 1901, under the threat of arrest from the Qing Empire, Zhang taught at Soochow University for a year before he escaped to Japan for several months. Upon return, he was arrested and jailed for three years until June 1906. He began to study the scriptures during his time in jail.
After his release, Zhang went to Japan to join Tongmeng Hui and became the chief editor of the newspaper Min Bao that strongly criticized the Qing Empire's corruption. There he also lectured on the Chinese classics and philology for overseas Chinese students. His students in Japan include Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren and Qian Xuantong. His most important student was Huang Kan. In 1908, Min Bao was banned by the Japanese government. This caused Zhang to focus on his philological research. He coined the phrase "Zhonghua Minguo" （中華民國）which eventually became the name of the Chinese Republic.
Because an ideological conflict with Sun Yat-sen and his Three Principles of the People, Zhang established the Tokyo branch of Guangfu Hui in February 1909.
After Wuchang Uprising, Zhang returned to China to establish the Republic of China Alliance and chief-edit the Dagonghe Ribao .
After Yuan Shikai became the President of the Republic of China in 1913, Zhang was his high-ranking advisor for a few months until the assassination of Song Jiaoren. After criticizing Yuan for possible responsibility of the assassination, Zhang was put under house arrest, in Beijing's Longquan Temple, until Yuan's death in 1916. After release, Zhang was appointed Minister of the Guangzhou Generalissimo in June 1917.
In 1924, Zhang left Kuomintang, entitled himself a loyalist to the Republic of China, and became critical of Chiang Kai-shek. Zhang established the National Studies Society in Suzhou in 1934 and chief-edited the magazine Zhi Yan .
He died two years later at 67 and was buried in a state funeral. In April 3, 1955, the People's Republic of China removed the coffin from Suzhou to Nanping Mountain, Hangzhou. The People's Republic established a museum devoted to him beside Xi Lake.
He had three daughters with his first wife. With Cai Yuanpei as witness, he married again in 1913, with Tang Guoli , an early Chinese feminist. They had two sons, Zhang Dao and Zhang Qi .
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