Zhang Zhidong is a tester of the changes in modern China and a reconciler of the clash of civilizations between the East and the West. He devoted a rich and controversial life to the prosperity of the country, but ended in the tide of history.
Following "Zeng Guofan" and "Yang Du", Tang Haoming spent five years polishing his sealed work "Zhang Zhidong". The book takes Zhang Zhidong's lifelong political activities as the main line, and his relations with friends, staff, and the imperial court as the weft line, and narrates how Zhang Zhidong faced "a major change that has not occurred in thousands of years" and how he joined the ruling clique of the late Qing Dynasty, but he was confused and struggled between the passage and application, the defense of the tao and the restoration. Tang Haoming believes that returning to the late Qing Dynasty and re-examining Zhang Zhidong and his failed foreign affairs undertakings has a strong sense of reality and concern...
Wonderful selection
Zhang Zhidong shot up the case and angrily scolded: Chonghou should be killed
The late autumn sun was about to set, and its last remnants still remained in the human world, covering the gray capital of the Qing Empire with a halo of pale yellow. The frost wind blowing from the west side of the mountain tightened up. It blew the tall poplar trees along the way, and lifted the loess on the imperial road into the sky, and the dust wrapped in the leaves fluttered aimlessly in the air. The desolate frost wind also blew the iron horses on the pagoda temples and palaces along the way to the left and right, emitting a crisp and long metal impact sound; and blew the Great Qing Apricot Yellow Dragon Banner erected high on the major city gates to the hunting sound. This scene is exactly like the situation in this eight-hundred-year-old capital: it is both old and mysterious; it is at the time of decay and decay, and it seems that there is a thick foundation that is tenaciously supporting, and it is not willing to sink down!
As the afterglow of the setting sun gradually faded, the pale yellow halo slowly turned into a gray twilight, and the lonely and cold autumn night of Kyoshi came.
Zhang Zhidong leaned on the sickbed, silently watching the changes in the universe that had been silent and repeated since ancient times. He had been ill for seven or eight days, and this afternoon he began to feel slightly better, perhaps because of the weakness of the sick body, and in the face of the passage of time between heaven and earth, a sad and sad mood poured out of his chest cavity for no reason.
He was forty-three years old, sixteen or seventeen years old, but he was still just a washing horse. Among the hundreds of official names, washing horses should be regarded as a vulgar name. Don't say ordinary people, even many people who deal with the officialdom, do not know that there are such official positions in the imperial court. The Jiaqing Dynasty has such a story.
A certain washing horse went out of Beijing to run an errand in the northwest, and one evening stayed at a post station in Gansu. The stationer took out a booklet to register, and asked him what his official position was, and the man replied, "Wash the horse." The stagecoach thought that this must be a husband who washed the horses for the palace. He asked, "How many horses do you wash in a day?" The man knew that the official had misunderstood, so he joked with him: "There is no fixed number, wash more when busy, wash less when idle, wash more when you are in a good mood, and wash less when you are in a bad mood." The eunuch was convinced that he was a groom, and said, "The emperor is really generous to his subordinates!" He placed him in the inferior room and ignored him, and the man did not make a sound. After a while, the county commander came to visit this man in a large car and took him to the county gate to live. The man sat in a large sedan in a big way, and the county commander followed on foot, bending down to speak to him respectfully.
The eunuch was horrified and asked the county commander's follower, "Isn't he a groom, and how can the county master be so kind to him?" The follower scolded, "What groom! He was the benefactor of the county master. Ten years ago, the county grandfather was in his hands, and five years ago, when he tried, he was the county grandfather's house teacher. The stagecoach understood that washing horses was not a groom, but he never knew how big an official "washing horses" was.
It turned out that the horse washer was the competent official of the Bureau. The duty of the Bureau was to be in charge of the books and books, which were subordinate to the Zhan ShiFu. Zhan Shifu was originally a subordinate official of the crown prince. In his later years, Kangxi decided not to make a prince and passed it down as a custom, so the Zhan Shi Mansion was abandoned for a time and later restored to prepare for the promotion of officials of the Hanlin Temple. The grade of washing horses is from wupin to the local level, and the grade is higher than that of the county order of the seven pins, plus there is a level of shi en, so the county order has a good gift for washing horses; however, in the Beijing division, washing horses is really a powerless idle petty official.
Zhang Zhidong xingshu fan surface
If it is said that there is no talent and no morality, it is just that whether he is a historian or a scholar, Zhang Zhidong has done a better job than others, but the official cannot be promoted, which is really frustrating. He was a man with great ambitions and great self-esteem, and from an early age he looked forward to being able to enter the world through the heavens and the earth in the future, leaving a few pages of brilliant records for Qingshi. However, to this day, it is still only a five-product, the years are not confused, the energy is declining, can the grand ambitions of this life be realized one day?
Zhang Zhidong was worried about himself, and even more worried about state affairs, he felt as if he was born to worry about the life of the country and the people. What happened in the country, whether external or internal, whether it was to be administered by others or to fight wars with soldiers, and whether he himself was in the Beijing Division or far away, as long as he let him know, he had to ask questions. What he often found difficult to understand was why the things done by the imperial court were always so unsatisfactory, and why many things that were originally easy to handle were always done so perversely. Alas, there is no one in North Korea! If you hold the program of the dynasty, the country will not be as unmanageable as the current mess. Zhang Zhidong often thought about it like this, and he couldn't help but start complaining in his heart.
Recently, there was one thing that worried him. More than a decade ago, during the civil unrest in the northwest, Agubai of the Kingdom of Kokand invaded Xinjiang with his troops and colluded with Britain and Russia in an attempt to rule this vast land for a long time. Tsarist Russia also harbored ambitions for Xinjiang, and under the pretext of protecting overseas Chinese, sent troops to occupy the important town of Ili. In the second year of Guangxu, Zuo Zongtang led his troops out of the customs and soon defeated Agubai and regained Xinjiang, but the Tsarist Russia refused to return Ili, and the imperial court decided to send Chonghou to Russia to discuss the matter.
Chonghou is a westerner and has close relations with foreigners. In the ninth year of Tongzhi, the Tianjin Teaching Case occurred, and Chonghou, who was then the Minister of Trade and Commerce of the Three Ports, strongly advocated the strict handling of Tianjin magistrates to please France. Later, he was ordered to apologize in Paris and did everything in his power to please the French. Many people in the officialdom and in the shilin hated this delicate soft bone, and Zhang Zhidong especially hated it, believing that he could not appoint Chonghou to do such a big thing.
The imperial decree has been issued, and of course it cannot be changed. Zhang Zhidong then went up to Shangshu and asked the empress dowager to order Chonghou to take the northwest land route into Russia, so that he could investigate the geography and people of Xinjiang, especially the Ili area, on the way, so as to have a good idea in mind, so as not to be fooled by the Russians. However, Chonghou was afraid of hardship, refused to take the land route, insisted on taking a sea boat, and claimed that he knew Xinjiang very well, and this trip would never let the country suffer losses. Cixi finally agreed to Chonghou. To this end, Zhang Zhidong added another heavy concern.
Therefore, he decided to study the entire Xinjiang public opinion on his own, ready to provide the imperial court with effective strategies. It was because of overwork that Zhang Zhidong, who had always been not very strong, fell ill.
At this time, he remembered this matter again, and the mountains and rivers around Ili City suddenly appeared in his mind. "What is the name of the river south of Ili City?" Zhang Zhidong slapped the door of his head, thinking for a long time and couldn't remember. He lifted the quilt and got out of bed, lifted the oil lamp on the windowsill, and thought of checking the map in the study next door.
"Fourth Master!" Hearing a noise in the room, Mrs. Wang, who was cleaning up her things in the kitchen with her maid Chunlan, pushed the door in. Mrs. Wang is much younger than her husband, and it is not convenient to call her by her first name. Zhang Zhidong was the fourth in her brotherhood, and she called her husband by this honorific title.
"Where are you going?"
"I wanted to go to the study and check the map."
"It's windy outside, just a little bit, don't get cold anymore." Madame Wang took the oil lamp in her husband's hand, helped him back to the bed, and said, "You still sit on the bed, and I will go and bring you the picture." Madame Wang took the drawing marked "Map of Imperial Public Opinion" from the next room and spread it out on the table. The map was huge and covered a table top. Zhang Zhidong moved the oil lamp to the northwest corner of the map. "Turks!" He looked up and folded the map as he repeated, "Turks. Yes, it's Tex! Madame Wang helped him put away the map and asked, "What is Turks?" "A river south of Ili City." Zhang Zhidong lifted the quilt himself, sat back on the bed, and said self-deprecatingly, "I'm afraid that I am really old and familiar with a name, and I can't remember it at once." Madame Wang comforted: "I can't blame you for this, I can only blame it for not taking a good name." What Turks, Turks, how difficult to remember, if you take a name like huaihe, Hanshui, don't you remember it all at once? ”
Zhang Zhidong laughed loudly. Madame's words amused him, and she said in a loud voice: "Yes, yes, Madame is right, you can't blame me for not remembering well, but its name is not taken well!" ”
Mrs. Wang also laughed, and she pressed the corners around her husband and said, "Don't think about these things anymore, these days are to let what Ili and Turks make you tired, calm down, wait until you recover." The second brother said that tomorrow morning there will be a number pulse and open a list. Lian Sheng's medical path is getting more and more refined. I also had this disease in Chengdu the year before, and the prescription prescribed to me by Long Yunfu, a famous doctor in Sichuan, did not work so quickly. I think that in a few years, his medical skills will be even more advanced than those few old doctors in the Tai Hospital who will only prescribe peace and unilaterally. ”
The Liansheng that Zhang Zhidong said was Lady Wang's brother Wang Yirong, and no one who knew a little about the history of philology would be unfamiliar with this name. More than ten years later, it was this Wang Yirong, with his interest in medicine and profound philology roots, that by chance, discovered the words that our ancestors carved on turtle plates and ox blades during the Shang Dynasty to record things, making immeasurable contributions to the study of the history of Chinese national civilization, and thus being revered as the father of oracle bones. But now he was just a review of the Hanlin Academy, a seven-pin xiaojing official.
"The second brother has repeatedly said that you should meditate and recuperate, and don't bother." "I've been recuperating and I'm not struggling." "No strain?" Madame Wang scoffed, "Without labor, how can you think of Turks again?" ”
"Alas!" Zhang Zhidong sighed, his eyes staring at the opposite wall, and did not make a sound for a long time.
……
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