introduction
There is an ancient poem "Flower Shadow": "The peach reflects the moon and the branches are oblique, and the shadow falls on the window screen through the tent yarn." Three places are like flowers, only two are empty flowers. Its author is the famous Ji Xiaolan. As we all know, Ji Xiaolan was a co-founder scholar, and he was the most outstanding person in the Qianlong Dynasty, with countless poems in his lifetime, and he also compiled the four libraries of the whole book.
I believe that everyone knows Ji Xiaolan for the first time, most of them are through the TV series "Iron Tooth Copper Tooth Ji Xiaolan", in which Ji Xiaolan is not only a person of integrity, but also a very witty and humorous person. Most of the officials in the DPRK and China had three wives and four concubines, but Ji Xiaolan only had two servants to serve, and he was really pure in heart and had a high temperament. However, is this really the case with Ji Xiaolan in history?
▲ Ji Xiaolan and Hezhen stills
01
Ji Xiaolan (紀晓岚), courtesy name Ji Yun (紀昀), was a native of XianXian County (present-day Xianxian County, Hebei Province) during the Qing Dynasty. Historically, the Xianxian Ji family is a huge family, and its history can be traced back to the Yongle years of the Ming Dynasty, and there are many celebrities in the family. Ji Xiaolan's father, Ji Rongshu, was also a university scholar in the imperial court, and Ji Xiaolan was influenced by his father from an early age and liked The Confucian classics very much, so he began to study the Confucian classics when he was four years old. In the process of studying with his master, his learning talent was immediately amazing to everyone, and he won the title of a child prodigy.
▲Portrait of Ji Xiaolan
After studying like this for a few years, when he was 7 years old, the master felt that he was hot, so he let him take the boy exam, unexpectedly, this time the exam, he actually achieved very good results, after which, he was happy to be awarded the title of prodigy. Ji Xiaolan also continued to study hard, preparing for the future imperial examinations, and striving to become a university student like his father.
02
Later, when Ji Xiaolan was 11 years old, his father took him to the capital and asked him to study with him in the capital. So I studied like this for a few years, until when I was twenty years old, Ji Xiaolan took the imperial examination for the first time and won the first place. This made him very happy, showing off everywhere, and even reading became very sloppy, sometimes he could not pass his father's examination school. The disadvantages of such pride and complacency were also reflected in the second participation in the township examination.
▲Restoration of the scene of the Qing Dynasty Scholar's Scientific Expedition
Originally, according to Ji Xiaolan's talent, he could definitely get better results, but when it came time to announce the results, he was only fourth class. At this point, he also knew that he had drifted before, otherwise he would not have achieved such a poor result. So after that, he began to sink his heart into reading and studying seriously, and after three years, he finally returned to the peak again and won the first place.
But Ji Xiaolan's personality is also strange, it is easy to sink his heart to study learning, and it is easy to be blinded by his own achievements. When he won the first place, he began to be complacent again. Sure enough, in the second year's exam, he failed the exam again, and he had to wait another three years before he could take the exam.
▲Ancient imperial examination scene painting
But this time Ji Xiaolan waited a little longer, because during this time, his mother died and was not allowed to take the exam, so this time he had to prepare for 6 years. It was not until the nineteenth year of Qianlong (1754 AD), which was already six years later, that he stood out, and was immediately admitted to the second and fourth grades, and successfully obtained the opportunity to enter the DPRK as an official.
03
However, Qianlong did not like Ji Xiaolan very much, because he looked very ugly, and even some wild histories directly said that Ji Xiaolan was actually a black fat man, ugly, which of course was too exaggerated, but even if it was not a black fat man, it was estimated that it would not be much better. Therefore, Qianlong, who looked at his face, was not very kind to see Ji Xiaolan.
▲Photos of archaeological tombs
In the 1970s, archaeologists were repairing Ji Xiaolan's tomb when they accidentally found seven white bones, all of which were women. After research, experts found that this is actually Ji Xiaolan's wife and concubine, and this image is very different from Ji Xiaolan in the TV series. But experts say: In fact, this is the real him.
In fact, Ji Xiaolan had four major hobbies in his life: smoking, drinking tea, eating meat, and being. And from the records in the "Qing History Draft", it can be seen that Ji Xiaolan actually married his wife Ma Yuefang when he was 17 years old, and had his first son at the age of 20. And in some documents of the same period of the Qing Dynasty, Ji Xiaolan's lust was also described, and it was recorded in the "Records of Insect Singing": "Take meat as rice, no grain of rice into the mouth." Nichiren Noburi". It can be seen that our Ji University scholars are not the image of the pure-hearted talents that people imagine.
epilogue
People's misunderstanding of Ji Xiaolan is far more than this, and there is a common picture in the TV series that he and Hezhen will fight when they meet. But in fact, Ji Xiaolan's job is mostly to compile books, just like the Siku Quanshu, and the things that He yan is responsible for can't be beaten, and Ji Xiaolan is still 20 years older than Hezhen, how can he calculate right and wrong with a child?
Resources:
"Flower Shadow"
"Insect Song Chronicles"