Speaking of Li Hongzhang, almost everyone who is familiar with Chinese history knows. He was the commander of the Huai Army and the founder of the Beiyang Marine Division, and one of the leaders of the Western Affairs Movement. Together with Zeng Guofan, Zhang Zhidong, and Zuo Zongtang, he was known as the "Four Famous Ministers" of Zhongxing in the late Qing Dynasty, and successively held important positions such as The Scholar of Wenhuadian University, the Minister of Trade and Commerce of Beiyang, and the Governor of Zhili. Li Hongzhang participated in many major historical events in the late Qing Dynasty during his lifetime, suppressed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement and the Twist army uprising, and was called "the man who recreated Xuanhuang" by Empress Dowager Cixi.
In the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, Li Hongzhang blindly avoided battle, resulting in the total annihilation of the Beiyang Marine Division. In addition, he signed many unequal treaties on behalf of the Qing government and the great powers, so many people regarded him as a traitor. However, the Japanese Prime Minister at that time, Ito Hirobumi, spoke highly of Li Hongzhang, calling him "the only person in the Qing Empire who has the ability to compete with the world powers", although this evaluation is obviously too high, for example, he is inferior to Zuo Zongtang in foreign wars, but it also shows that Li Hongzhang himself still has certain ability, otherwise he would not have become a prominent figure in the late Qing Dynasty.
Today we will not discuss Li Hongzhang's merits and demerits, but only his origin. Li Hongzhang's grandfather, Li Dianhua, was a scholar with more than a dozen acres of thin fields in his family, and he was bent on getting ahead through the imperial examination, but he was named Sun Shan in many examinations. Later, he gave up, stopped participating in the imperial examination, and made a living from farming in his hometown. Due to the large population of his family and the limited income from farming, he taught himself Traditional Chinese Medicine and subsidized his family by seeing people in the eight neighboring villages.
One year, Li Dianhua rushed home after seeing a doctor, and halfway met a little girl who was abandoned by her parents because of smallpox. At that time, medicine was not as developed as it is now, and there was no particularly good treatment for smallpox. Li Dianhua took the poor little girl home for the purpose of the doctor's benevolence and actively treated her. Maybe her fate should not be extinguished, and soon after, this little girl's smallpox was actually cured by Li Dianhua. Although the disease was cured, there were many pockmarks left on the face.
After that, the girl became a member of the Li family and helped work in the Li family when she grew up. When Li Dianhua saw that the girl was industrious and capable, he recognized her as a righteous daughter. Years later, the girl grew up and reached the age of talking about marriage, but because she had a lot of pony on her face and a pair of big feet, she never found her in-laws, and she was ridiculed by some neighbors. Li Dianhua's fourth son, Li Wen'an, was very kind and sympathetic to the situation of his righteous sister, and at the same time he was also old enough to marry his wife, so after obtaining his father's consent, Li Wen'an married his own righteous sister. Although the two are not related by blood, because the girl grew up in Li's parents, the marriage was still ridiculed.
Don't look at the girl's numb face and big feet, but she is a Woman of Wangfu, she is not only hard-working, spicy and capable, but also good at governing the family, after marriage, everything in the family, she is well-organized. Li Wen'an had no worries, so he concentrated on reading and doing research, and later passed the same examination as Zeng Guofan. His wife successively gave birth to six sons and two daughters for the Li family, the second son of which was Li Hongzhang, who was later famous in the world. After Li Hongzhang's founding, her mother was extremely filial, and she enjoyed all the glory and wealth in the second half of her life, and lived to the age of 83 before she died, which was already a very high life expectancy at that time.