There are two opinions about the year of Mencius' birth and death:
One is that Mencius was born in the seventeenth year of King Zhou An (385 BC) and died in the eleventh year of Zhou Nanwang (304 BC).
Second, Mencius was born in the fourth year of the reign of kings in Zhou Dynasty (372 BC) and died in the twenty-sixth year (289 BC).
Mencius' ancestors were aristocrats in the state of Lu, but later his family fortune declined and he moved from the state of Lu to the state of Zou. He lost his father when he was three years old, and Meng Mu brought him up. Meng Mu's godson was very strict. His godson stories, such as "moving the son to teach the son" and "breaking the loom", have become eternal stories. There is a saying in Saint Amethyst that "Meng Mu used to choose a neighbor".
Mencius learned from Confucius, but praised Confucius, thinking that "the life of the people is not prosperous in Confucius."
Mencius traveled around Qi, Jin, Song, Xue, Lu, Teng and Liang countries to lobby his thoughts of "benevolent governance" and "kingliness". However, because the vassal States were busy with the war at that time, almost no one adopted his thought of governing the country.
Mencius is one of the most important representatives of Confucianism in China, and his thoughts have a great influence on later generations.
But his position was not very high before the Song Dynasty. Since Han Yu listed Mencius as the only person in pre-Qin Confucianism who inherited Confucius' "orthodoxy" in The Original Road, there has been a "promotion movement" of Mencius, and his status has gradually improved. In the fourth year of Xining in northern Song Shenzong (107 1), Mencius was first listed as one of the subjects in the imperial examination, and was later promoted to a Confucian classic. Zhu in the Southern Song Dynasty combined it with The Analects of Confucius, Daxue and The Doctrine of the Mean into four books. From the Yuan Dynasty to the first year of Shun Dynasty (1330), Mencius was named "Yashenggong" and later called "Yashenggong", ranking second only to Confucius. His thoughts and Confucius' thoughts are collectively called "The Way of Confucius and Mencius".