It is often said that the people who are popular with the people win the world, and this is also true for officials. Since ancient times, such a Qing official as Hai Rui Bao Zheng, whether before or after death, has been respected by too many people, if something happens to them, there are countless loyal and righteous people who will stand up to escort them, and in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, there was also such a famous Qing official, he was Wu Baoxiu.
Wu Baoxiu, the character Ruzhen, his birth year is no longer considerable. He belonged to the Shuxiang Mendi, and his ancestor was the famous Jinshi Wutong during the Southern Song Dynasty, but after that, their family did not produce any prominent figures, so Wu Baoxiu's parents had high expectations of him. Wu Baoxiu was very quick-witted since childhood, and when he was nine years old, he was able to recite poems and sentences, when he lived in his uncle's house, he saw some faint fire outside at night, and his uncle casually read a pair of pairs at the moment: "Fire illuminates the bamboo hedge thousand Confucius." ”
To his uncle's surprise, the pair he casually came up with really let his nephew pick up, and Wu Baoxiu replied almost without thinking after hearing it: "The wind flutters paper to draw a fly." This pair is neat and neat, the artistic conception is beautiful, even some masters can't find anything wrong, and his uncle is even more praised, thinking that Wu Baoxiu will definitely have a bright future in the future.
Sure enough, in 1589, Wu Baoxiu entered the high school, which can be described as the Guangzong Yaozu, and was subsequently named the Dali Commentator, and then became the Kangzhi County in southwest Jiangxi. At that time, Nankang was a poor place with three disregards, and the polarization of this place was particularly serious, the rich gentry were extremely rich, but the ordinary people were very sad, and the unjust, false and wrongly decided cases far exceeded those of other states and counties. In the past, when Zhixian came to Nankang, he would choose to make a sum of money, ignore the poor people, vigorously favor the rich people, and then be transferred after the term of office expired. But Wu Baoxiu is different, he is a person with clear grievances, there is no distinction between rich and poor in his eyes, he never favors anyone, he came to Nankang and did not take anything, less than two months to deal with the backlog of cases in Nankang for many years, so that some of the magnates who have escaped legal sanctions have been duly punished, so the people are grateful to Wu Baoxiu, he has a very high reputation in Nankang.
At that time, there was a tax eunuch in Poyang Lake, named Li Dao, who had some background in the palace, so he ran amok in this place, and the people of several surrounding counties hated him to the bone. After Wu Baoxiu came to Nankang to serve as Zhi County, Li Dao sent someone to come to him with a generous gift, hoping that Wu Baoxiu would help him more in the future, so that he would have no scruples about doing evil. It is often said that he would not hit the smiley face person, but Wu Baoxiu had already heard what Li Dao had done and was quite unhappy with it, so he refused the gift and did not come to see Li Dao, which made Li Dao remember and hate it. Once, Wu Baoxiu's men went out to run errands and passed by Poyang Lake by boat, which happened to be known to Li Dao, so he hurriedly sent people to chase after him, hoping to use this to blackmail Wu Baoxiu.
As a result, due to the cold winter, the river conditions were not too much, and the boats sent out by Li Dao to chase them overturned, and his men died. Furious, Li Dao personally went to Nankang to find Wu Baoxiu, falsely claiming that these drowned people were victims of Wu Baoxiu's men, implying that he wanted to take advantage of the opportunity or pull him on the ship. Wu Baoxiu, on the other hand, was not impressed, so he was unjustly named "resisting the will and stealing taxes" by Li Dao, and escorted him to Beijing. At that time, Wu Baoxiu's wife Chen Shi hoped to enter Beijing with her husband, but Wu Baoxiu did not want his wife to suffer, so he refused the matter.
Chen Shi is also a fierce woman, after returning home, the more she thinks about Wu Baoxiu's encounter, the more angry she is, and she hates Li Dao to the bone, and in order to show her innocence, she chooses to commit suicide, and the people in the county cry bitterly after learning about it. When Wu Baoxiu got on the prison cart and was escorted back to Beijing, the people of the whole county gathered together in unison, sent Wu Baoxiu off along the way, and sent it all the way to Jiangzhou Ferry, and as an official, he could do so much, and Wu Baoxiu's life was worth it.
After Wu Baoxiu was escorted back to Beijing, there were even more ministers from the DPRK and the Central Government who wrote to him to seek revenge, and some people were willing to die on his behalf, and the people were even more noisy, and under pressure, Emperor Mingshenzong could only release Wu Baoxiu and others, cut them to the people, and changed Li Dao's position, which was also regarded as a personnel work.
After Wu Baoxiu returned home, he was disheartened by Shitu, he kept filial piety for his wife for a while, never mentioned Shitu half a word, but his heart was extremely depressed, and he eventually fell seriously ill and died. A year later, in order to commemorate this rare Qingtian Grand Master, the residents of Nankang built an ancestral hall for him and the Chen family to commemorate it.
Reference: "Cangnan Archives Ancient Wu Name Man"
History of the Ming Dynasty