In Hong Kong, most of the streets are named after the British in the colonial period, and there are very few streets named after Chinese people, and Yuxiu Street is named after Zheng Yuxiu, a famous female lawyer and administrative officer in China.
Zheng Yuxiu was born in 1891 in Guangdong to a family of eunuchs, his grandfather was a real estate merchant, his father served in the late Qing Dynasty Ministry, she had a good childhood, but Zheng Yuxiu was born anti-bone, rebelling against the control of the old feudal family. When she was young, because of her resistance to foot binding, she made a fuss in the family, and her parents had to give up. As a teenager, in order to protest the marriage her parents had set for her, she simply left and went to Tianjin to study alone.
The new era gave her the spirit of a new woman and also gave her the opportunity to see the outside world. Zheng Yuxiu joined the Alliance after crossing to Japan in the east, and she was a weak woman who was determined to save the country and the people, which was rare at that time. After returning to China, the weak Zheng Yuxiu not only participated in the delivery of explosives, but also participated in the assassination of late Qing politicians.
In 1912, the League heard that the reason why Puyi refused to abdicate was because of Yuan Shikai's support, and the League quickly introduced an assassination plan, and the person in charge was Zheng Yuxiu. On the morning of January 16, 1912, Zheng Yuxiu had already led the assassination team to ambush Yuan Shikai on the road that day. At this time, the League urgently contacted Zheng Yuxiu and abandoned the plan to assassinate Yuan Shikai, because it was not Yuan Shikai who supported Puyi, but Liangbi. Zheng Yuxiu rushed to the scene to stop the assassination plan, and the assassination operation had already begun, and there was chaos in the street. Zheng Yuxiu did not stop for a second, very calmly pulled out his pistol, and after firing two shots into the sky, aimed at the horse of Yuan Shikai's carriage was a shot. Yuan Shikai and his entourage were panicked and had no choice, and it was the best time to start, but Zheng Yuxiu's pistol was wrong at this moment. At that time, the police had reacted quickly, looking for the person who fired the gun in the crowd, and Zheng Yuxiu calmly put away the pistol and angrily shouted at the police: "Is this reasonable!" Who would dare to do such a thing in broad daylight? It was this astuteness that allowed her to get out of danger quickly.
Just half a month later, Zheng Yuxiu's team leader successfully blew up Liangbi. Before dying, Liangbi sighed and said, "'The one who blew me up, the hero also.' I die, the Great Qing dies! ''
Soon, the whole capital knew about this beautiful killer, and Zheng Yuxiu had to hide in France. In 1917, Zheng received a master's degree in law from the University of Paris and joined the French Law Society. Zheng Yuxiu is still a leading figure for international students in France, and during the Paris Peace Conference, Zheng Yuxiu was appointed as a member of the Chinese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference because of his proficiency in Chinese, mainly responsible for translation. At that time, the "May Fourth Movement" had already broken out in China, and the Beijing government insisted on letting Lu Zhengxiang, the head of the delegation and the chief of foreign affairs of the Beijing government, sign it, and on the other hand, it threw the pot to Lu Zhengxiang. On the evening of June 27, 1919, more than 300 international students surrounded Lu Zhengxiang's place of accommodation and strongly demanded that he refuse to sign. Zheng Yuxiu was elected as a representative to negotiate with Lu Zhengxiang, she went to Lu Zhengxiang alone, saw that he had made up his mind to sign, and in a hurry, he plucked a rose in the garden, stood behind Lu Zhengxiang, resisted Lu Zhengxiang with flowers, and said sharply: 'You want to sign, I will not let you go with this gun.' Lu Zhengxiang was too frightened to go out of his residence, let alone go to the Palace of Versailles to sign.
Zheng Yuxiu used a rose to prevent Lu Zhengxiang and others from signing the contract, becoming a heroine of patriots. What makes Zheng Yuxiu proudest in his life is not the assassination, but the "Rose Branch Incident" of the Paris Peace Conference. Later, Zheng Yuxiu also took this paper rose with him and hung it in his bedroom for many years.
In 1924, Zheng Yuxiu received a doctorate in law from the University of Paris, and after returning to China, she married her classmate Dr. Wei Daoming, and the two opened a law firm in the Shanghai Concession. In 1942, Wei Daoming succeeded Hu Shi as ambassador to the United States, and Zheng Yuxiu became the ambassador's wife.
In the autobiography that Zheng Yuxiu wrote for himself, the writing of the first half of his life can be described as a lot of ink, but the second half of his life is only a few words, and he probably feels that there is nothing vigorous and just to write. After returning to China, Zheng Yuxiu and Hu Shi became sworn enemies, and Hu Shi once said to her: "This class of women does not care about their faces." It is said that her doctoral dissertation was ghostwritten by a friend, and the result was that she was embarrassed when she defended.
When Zheng Yuxiu opened a law firm in Shanghai, China did not allow women to be lawyers, so she could only appear in the French Concession court, using a French lawyer's qualification certificate. Zheng Yuxiu's litigation fees were tens of thousands of yuan, and at that time, the income of an ordinary worker was only seventy or eighty yuan or even less, and Du Yuesheng once sighed: "Zheng Yuxiu's income from a case is worthy of the first prize of a horse race in the Shanghai Racecourse. When Meng Xiaodong and Mei Lanfang divorced, Du Yuesheng hired Zheng Yuxiu to be a lawyer for Meng Xiaodong, and suddenly demanded Mei Lanfang's divorce compensation of 40,000 yuan.
(Zheng Yuxiu in "Our French Years")
The beauty killer who once ran for the country gradually lost his original intention. In 1928, Lin Yutang's "Enlightened English Reader" compiled for the Enlightened Bookstore was copied by the World Book Company, which sued the World Bookstore, which invited Zheng Yuxiu, and Zheng Yuxiu countersued the Enlightened Bookstore for framing. Because Zheng Yuxiu's contacts in the political and legal circles are very wide, in the end, he actually said that the judge was biased in favor of the World Bookstore, and later Lin Yutang wrote a special article to satirize her. Luo Buzhou, a famous businessman, hired her as a lawyer, and she accepted a thousand oceans and did not care, and the Shanghai Bar Association expelled her, but she resumed her membership by virtue of her connections. In 1932, Zheng Yuxiu was again exposed to embezzle more than 22,000 yuan of public funds, and she hid in Europe to evade sanctions.
Dong Zhujun, the founder of the Jin Jiang Hotel, once recalled Zheng Yuxiu's extravagant life, she followed Song Meiling in Nanjing when she was red half the sky, drinking water to drink tap water from the Shanghai Concession, bread only ate Shanghai Lao dachang, these daily diets, transported by train once a day, and even transported by plane. Dong Zhujun indignantly said: "'Life is squandered and corrupt! ''
(Wei Daoming)
But soon, Zheng Yuxiu's luxurious life was over, although she did a lot for Song Meiling, but because of serious corruption problems, she was swept out by the old Jiang and had to go away to Brazil and the United States. In foreign countries, Zheng Yuxiu, who has no connections, has no way to go, and after business failure, he has to rely on playing mahjong to kill time. In 1954, one of her arms was removed for cancer, and she spent five years in a painful career, dying in Los Angeles in 1959.
This once-passionate schoolgirl is the voice of justice and conscience of China's new generation; but after her inception, she became synonymous with greed and ugliness. I wonder if she was in a foreign country in her later years, and she still missed the tap water and bread in Shanghai?