Empress Dowager Cixi's life was full of scenery, but it was not always the case, and there were also times when she was depressed, the most depressed of which was when the Eight-Power Alliance invaded Beijing. At that time, Empress Dowager Cixi did not carry enough food and money in order to escape for her life. So that often hungry, according to the "Gengzi Xi Hunting Cong Talk" record: "from the city to the fork, all stay in the broken shop, ask for a bowl of coarse rice, a cup of mung bean soup, always can not find a place." The ordinary people who fled the famine were even more distressed. From these few words, it is enough to know how bad the situation of Empress Dowager Cixi was at that time, and it was simply inferior to that of the fleeing people.
When Cixi and his party arrived in Xi'an, this situation was improved. Many wealthy merchants in Guanzhong heard that Empress Dowager Cixi had fled to Xi'an, so they took the initiative to donate some materials and money to Cixi. Their purpose is obvious, in order to win Cixi's favor, as the saying goes, "the icing on the cake is better than sending charcoal in the snow", at this time Cixi is in distress, and sponsoring Cixi at this time is tantamount to sending charcoal to her in the snow.
Zhou Ying, a wealthy female merchant in Guanzhong, is one of the people who funded Cixi, but Zhou Ying is not an opportunistic person, her business is very big but not treacherous at all, "genuine, Tong Sou is not deceived" is her business standard, so under her management, the Wu family's business is getting bigger and bigger. At that time, due to the impact of the war, many people began to flee their hometowns, many of them entered Guanzhong, facing a large number of hungry victims, Zhou Ying was very distressed and decided to do her best to rescue them. She began to pay for it herself, organizing people to set up porridge shops in many places, and arranging for people to boil porridge for the victims every day, so that those who did not have food could survive. At the same time, she also opened warehouses in many places to release grain to provide for the poor local families.
In addition, Zhou Ying also donated money to build water conservancy and support education. When the people in Jingyang City had difficulty drinking water, Zhou Ying decided to take on this responsibility and help the people solve this problem, so she spent a lot of money and hired people to dig dozens of wells in the city, so that the drinking water problem of tens of thousands of people was solved. Just as the so-called "fountain of grace of dripping water repays each other", and Zhou Ying's good deed is not only a small favor, it is really saving the people of the whole city! This made the people grateful to her, and her deeds were specially recorded in the county chronicle.
When she learned that Cixi had fled to Xi'an, she bought a few cows and sent them to Cixi's palace overnight to squeeze out steaming milk for Cixi, and Zhou Ying also donated 100,000 taels of silver to Cixi. This made Cixi very happy and decided to reward her with something, and finally Cixi personally brought a plaque of "Lady Protector" to Zhou Ying. Praised her patriotism in times of national crisis. For the Wu family on the rich side, there is no shortage of anything, but the reward of this plaque is a great honor, more precious than anything.
In the face of national justice, Zhou Ying's performance is far more than this, when the Qing Dynasty government was forced to sign the "Xinugu Treaty", Zhou Ying donated a large amount of silver again in order to show her determination to go to the country. Cixi was grateful for her contribution to the country and named her "Lady of a Pint of Commandments". It is precisely because of Zhou Ying's various acts of kindness that she has not only won the appreciation of the people, but also won the recognition of the ruling class.
Unfortunately, Zhou Ying died at the age of 42. Zhou Ying, who had long looked down on things outside her body, made a surprising decision before she died, distributing all the family's property to the next person who had been working for her. And it was Zhou Ying's act of kindness that touched everyone, so that on the day of her funeral, tens of thousands of people invariably sent her off. This spectacular scene may be the best evaluation of Zhou Ying's life!