As the leader of the literary circle of the Song Dynasty and the representative of the Chinese haofang poets, Su Shi was straightforward in his temperament throughout his life, and he was a famous "big mouth" at that time, with one saying and one saying, and what to say, and the ancients paid attention to "no faith and no standing" and a promise of thousands of gold, so in terms of Su Shi's personality and identity, naturally he would not and did not dare to easily betray his faith.
But in the classic book "Su Shen Liangfang" recorded an incident, Su Shi once broke his promise, what is the matter? Moreover, in the records of the Song Mingwen people, it is also recorded that Su Shi indirectly "killed countless people", what is this?
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Su Shi's temperament is very straight, it is difficult to believe that Su Shi will be treacherous, we can peek through Su Shi in the new and old party struggles.
During the reign of Emperor Shenzong of Song, because of Wang Anshi's change of law, the imperial court was divided into two factions, namely, the New Party supported the New Deal and the Old Party opposed the New Deal, and the Court quickly began to divide into two factions. Like Wang Anshi, Su Shi also advocated reforming politics, but the way of reform was different, Su Shi belonged to the reformist faction, believing that the new law was too hasty and too fierce, and wrote to talk about the shortcomings of the new law, which made Wang Anshi feel quite angry, so under the exclusion of the new party, Su Shi requested to leave Beijing to take up a post, and was awarded the Hangzhou General Judge. For more than ten years, Su Shi traveled to Hangzhou, Xuzhou, Huzhou, Huangzhou and Ruzhou.
In 1085, When Emperor Zhezong of Song succeeded to the throne, Empress Gao bowed to the government, Sima Guang was reinstated as a minister, the imperial court came to a 180° reversal, Empress Gao and Sima Guang immediately and completely abolished the new law, and at the same time degraded the new and used the old, denounced the new party officials, and recalled the old party officials to the central government. Su Shi, who had opposed Wang Anshi, was summoned back to the court as a Rebbe Langzhong, promoted to a living house within half a month, promoted to Zhongshu Sheren three months later, and soon promoted to Hanlin Bachelor, ZhiZhi Zhen, and Zhi Li Bu Tribute.
In terms of political destiny, the old party was kind to Su Shi, which was related to Su Shi's political fate, and even if Su Shi did not say good things, at least he should not openly oppose it. However, when Su Shi saw that the old party was frantically suppressing the new party and abolishing the new law, he proposed to the imperial court and attacked the corruption exposed by the old party. From the perspective of the old party, this was Su Shi's betrayal of them, so Su Shi's situation could be imagined, and in desperation, Su Shi once again requested to be transferred to Hangzhou. In the middle of the way, he was transferred back to the capital, and because of political disagreements, he was again transferred.
After Emperor Zhezong of Song came to power, the New Party came to power again, and Su Shi, who was more than 60 years old, was in a worse situation, and was successively demoted to Huizhou (present-day Huizhou, Guangdong) and Danzhou (danzhou, Hainan), especially Danzhou, which was far away from the Beijing Division, equivalent to the song dynasty exile of prisoners. After Emperor Huizong of Song succeeded to the throne, the imperial court issued a general amnesty, and Su Shi was reinstated as Emperor Fenglang, but died of illness while passing through Changzhou, Jiangsu.
In short, Su Shi's official path can be summarized into two points: First, he can neither tolerate the new party nor forgive the old party, and second, most of his time in the official field, he is reviled and travels from place to place. The reason for this is that Su Shi is too straight.
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A person with a personality that does not even care about his political future is obviously unlikely to break his promise, but the classics record that Su Shi was untrustworthy to a friend named Chaogu.
In 1180, Su Shi, who had just escaped from the Wutai poetry case, was once again degraded and came to Huangzhou (黄州, in modern Huanggang, Hubei) with his family. However, the disappointment of the political arena was a fortunate event in the literary world, and Su Shi left countless beautiful works in Huangzhou, including the magnificent "Nian Nu Jiao Chibi Huaigu".
For Su Shi, the degraded Huangzhou had a great joy, that is, the villagers were thousands of miles away from the Chao Valley, came to Huangzhou to accompany him, and served as a tutor for the Su family.
Su Shi has mentioned Chaogu in many poetry articles, among which When Su Shi was demoted to Huangzhou, he once wrote a poem "Yuan Xiu Cai" to give Chao Gu (Zi Yuan Xiu), and the so-called Yuan Xiu Cai, that is, the Nest Dish of Su Shi's hometown, was renamed "Yuan Xiu Cai" because of the Chao Valley. Su Shi told Chaogu that after he went back, he must send chao rape seeds to him, he would personally plant, and even send chaogu vegetable seeds with "Zhang Qian moved alfalfa" and "Ma Yuanzai coix", which showed that his friendship with Chaogu was extraordinary.
According to Su Rui's "Biography of Chaogu", Chao Gu is a strange person, and Su Rui has known him since childhood, his father is a farmer in Meishan, but he is both literate and martial, proficient in riding and shooting thorns, with an extremely free personality, and likes to fight swords to go to the end of the world. Later, Su Shi and Su Rui were both demoted to Lingnan, and the 73-year-old ChaoGu hiked thousands of miles from Meishan in Sichuan Province, first to visit Su Rui, and then to Hainan to visit Su Shi. The "Biography of Chaogu" records that in the first spring of the second year of Yuan Fu, from Meizhou to the book: "I walked thousands of miles to see the public, and I did not intend to be complete, and now I am in Meiyi." I will see you every day, and there will be no hatred in death"... See Zi Zhan (苏轼) in Hainan.
Su Shi is a colorful polyhedron, in addition to the identity of an official and a literary hero, Su Shi also has the identity of a medical scientist, and he likes to collect folk remedies very much. The Song Dynasty attached more importance to medicine, and even the literati generally understood some medical techniques, forming the so-called "Confucian Medicine", and in 1075, Shen Kuo's "Liang fang" and Su Shi's "Su Xueshi Fang" were jointly compiled and published as "Su Shen Liangfang".
Chaogu collected a secret recipe called "Shengshanzi", even his own son was reluctant to pass it on, Su Shi was overjoyed after learning about it, and repeatedly asked to teach it to himself, in case of emergency, Chaogu reluctantly agreed, asking Su Shi to swear in front of the gushing river, this party will never be passed on.
In the "Su Shen Liangfang on the Sacred Scattered Sons", it is recorded: "Xi Yu ran the "Thousand Golden Fangs", the three buildings scattered clouds, and the disease was all cured, and Sun Simiao was particularly concerned. It is said that this prescription is not close to human feelings, and as for emergency relief, its test is special, but it is known that the gods use spirits. Informal, rational and confusing, intellectually unknowable. Now give the Holy Son, and so on. "The Holy Scattered Son in Su Shi's eyes is an indispensable medicine for emergency relief, and the effect is miraculous."
However, it didn't take long for Su Shi to lose faith. When Su Shi degraded the deputy envoy of the Huangzhou regiment, he encountered an outbreak of plague and many dead people. At the moment of the pandemic, Su Shi could not bear the promise he had made, and immediately sacrificed the "Holy Scattered Son" to boil soup medicine for the people to take. In the "Complete Works of Su Dongpo and the Narration of Saint Sanzi", it is recorded that "who lived in Huangzhou, compared with the epidemic of the year (consecutive years, recent years, and frequent years), combined with this medicine scattered, the number of lives is innumerable."
In 1090, when Su Shi was an official in Hangzhou, he once again broke his promise, when there was an epidemic plague in Suzhou and Hangzhou, Su Shi once again took out the prescription of Shengshanzi and ordered his subordinates to distribute the medicine to the people of Hangcheng free of charge according to the prescription. ”
All in all, breaking a promise and saving countless people, Su Shi broke a promise to save people, so Su Shi's promise was more admirable. After Chaogu learned of this, not only did not blame Su Shi, but also became Su Shi's tutor, and when Su Shi degraded the official Hainan more than ten years later, Chaogu, who was more than 70 years old, disregarded the eyes of the world (at that time, the literati did not dare to communicate with the Su Shi brothers) and publicly declared that they had traveled thousands of miles to see Su Shi and Su Rui.
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So, what is the efficacy of the Holy Sanko? What subverts our cognition is that Su Shi believes that it is "to cure all diseases", but Song Mingwen records that it is "killing countless people", and even later generations of people have taken Shengshanzi to the point of "ten lifeless".
"Su Shen Liangfang on the Saint Sanzi" records: Everything does not ask about the two senses of yin and yang, or the change of men and women, the shape of the most dangerous, drink several doses quickly. This medicine can not be common sense and questioned. If the epidemic is epidemic, do not ask the old and the young, do not ask the old and the young, boil a pot, drink a lamp, then the time is not in. If you live in peace and take it on an empty stomach, you will eat fast and beautifully, and you will not be born with all diseases, and the treasure of the True Ji Shiwei family will also be.
According to Su Shi's record, Saint Sanzi is simply a good medicine for home travel, and its efficacy does not need to be questioned at all, and you can drink it when you are usually idle, and you can also "not be born with a hundred diseases". From today's scientific point of view, it is obvious that Saint Sanzi cannot be so magical, and the more he preaches the elixir that cures all diseases, the more untrustworthy it is. It can be seen through Shengshanzi that although Su Shi understands some medical techniques, the level of Chinese medicine should not be too high, because the ancient doctors with slightly higher medical skills know that different diseases are treated differently, and it is impossible to hold Shengshanzi to such a height of "curing all diseases".
Perhaps due to Su Shi's celebrity effect, Shengshanzi was also mythologized and quickly became popular. Ye Mengde, a literary scholar of the late Northern Song Dynasty, said in the "Summer Retreat Record": "After the declaration of peace, this medicine (Shengshanzi) prevailed in the Beijing Division, and the Taixue Zhusheng believed in You du and killed countless people. ”
During the Ming Dynasty, plague broke out in Suzhou, and the local governor believed in Su Shi's record and used Shengshanzi to cure the epidemic. However, the Ming Dynasty scholar Yu Ben recorded in the "Sayings of Continuing Medicine": "In the year of Hongzhi (1493), Wuzhong (Suzhou) was a great work of plague. Wu Yi ordered Sun Pan to order the healers to cultivate the Holy Scattered Son and spread all over the streets. And published in its formula, the sick take it, there is no life, the rate is manic and faint. ”
When Su Shi was treated with The Holy Son, "there were countless living people", why couldn't others? There may be three reasons: first, the medicine is not right, the symptoms faced by Su Shi are not the same as the symptoms encountered by posterity, it can be seen that Shengshanzi certainly cannot cure all diseases; second, Su Shi's "countless living people" may be exaggerated, not reflecting the other side of "killing countless people", or will be because of the death of Shengshanzi as a death due to the plague; the third is that the dose is not right, Su Shi's dose is not the same as the dose of posterity, leaving aside the dose of Chinese medicine is a hooligan, and the measurement units of different dynasties are very different, and the measurement error in different regions of the same dynasty is also very large. As a result, Su Shi's therapeutic effect was very different from others.
In general, putting aside Su Shi's level of traditional Chinese medicine and the true efficacy of Shengshanzi, between saving people and keeping promises, Su Shi still chose to destroy his promise to save people, and based on this alone, Su Shi's character is enough to be admired. Of course, the promotion of the miraculous effect of the Holy Scattered Son led to Su Shi indirectly "killing countless people", which was a problem of the cognitive level of the ancients, and it was impossible to condemn Su Shi for this.
References: "History of Song", "Su Shen Liangfang", "Biography of Chaogu", etc