Gong Zizhen
Patriotic poet Gong Zizhen's sentence "Falling red is not a merciless thing, turning into spring mud is more protective of flowers" is well-known in our country, and everyone can recite it, but perhaps few people know that Gong Zizhen's eldest son, although he was quite talented in his life, he was arrogant and arrogant, and his fate was reckless, and he was later forced to do things under the hands of foreigners to make a living, and finally directly participated in the burning of the Yuanmingyuan by the Anglo-French coalition army, and it is said that he was also the leader of the Anglo-French coalition army in burning the Yuanmingyuan, and was directly detained as a national traitor and a historical sinner. If Gong Zizhen knew about it, he was afraid that even the lid of the coffin would be overturned in anger.
Speaking of Gong Orange, who was born into a famous family, his birth has a fantasy and mysterious color.
It is said that at that time, there was a three-pagoda temple in the location of the Shanghai Taoist Office, and it is said that there was a dragon in the town under these three pagoda temples.
Gong Zizhen and his wife were middle-aged and childless, Mrs. Gong went to the Three Pagoda Temple one day to ask for a son, did not want to just enter the temple gate, then trance saw a big dragon rushing towards her, frightened her temple also did not enter, the son did not ask, panicked, uncertain hurry back home.
It is also strange to say that this Lady Gong became pregnant shortly after her return and gave birth to a son after full term. This boy who is highly suspected of being the reincarnation of the evil dragon is Gong Orange.
Sure enough, the tiger father has no dog, this Gong Orange has been talented and intelligent since he was a child, the family has a lot of books, and he loves to read books because of this.
When Gong Zizhen was serving as the chief of the ceremonial department in the capital, Gong Orange, who was very young, lived in the capital with his father for 13 years.
In the past 13 years, he has spent the happiest and most unbridled youth and youth of his life in Beijing. In addition to reading poetry books, his spare time is also colorful.
With Lao Tzu as a high official and rich, he liked to hang out with the group of ethnic minority brothers in the capital, and every day he rode horses and shot arrows with them, drank wine and bragged, and played with them.
Because he and the Hu'er called him brothers and brothers every day, he soon became proficient in Manchuria, Mongolian, Tanguti and other minority scripts, and it was particularly impressive that he was also proficient in English.
In the face of such a precious son who was collected by miscellaneous studies, Gong Zizhen, as a father, was excited in his heart and overflowed with self-satisfaction, and he directly wrote a poem to praise his son:
The home has a hundred feet of clouds, and the wind and smoke accompany the gradually growing.
Sheng'er only knew the Qin inscription, and the fragile Zhilan smiled at the Six Dynasties.
However, who would have thought that such a young master Gong Da, who was born into a famous family, was full of talent and learning, and had a very high self-esteem, had failed in the first and only imperial examination in his life.
Gong Orange, who thought that his fame was as easy as probing for things, has never taken such an exam since then.
After the defeat of the scientific expedition, Gong Orange still invited a group of fox friends every day, spent money like dirt, and sat and ate the mountain. However, at this time, Gong Orange did not know that the setbacks and blows of life had just begun.
In September 1841, after the 49-year-old Gong Zizhen died violently in Danyang, Jiangsu, Gong Orange, who had always lived a life of carefree food and clothing, had to put down his body and shelf and go out to make a living after squandering the family property left by his father.
From 1851 onwards, Gong Orange began to mix behind Wei Yuan, who was then Gaoyou Zhizhou. Three years later, Wei Yuan left his post, and he ran to Zeng Guofan's camp again, because he was not reused, he reluctantly mixed for a year and left. Then for a long time, Gong Orange was basically in a state of unemployed vagrants. The daily expenses of the family are all dependent on pawn things:
Middle-aged is quite unambitious, the family is very poor, and the constant canon and piano books.
(Wang Tao)
During his poor stay in Shanghai, Gong Orange became acquainted with the comprador Zeng Zhipu, who saw that Gong Orange could speak pure and fluent English, so he introduced him to the Englishman Wittoma.
Since then, Gong Orange has officially started his career of doing things for foreigners in the second half of his life.
It is said that the foreigners are very generous to Gong Orange, and also give him enough face. His salary is "ten thousand gold per month", and going out to run errands is also full of pomp and circumstance, "guarded by the catchers." In addition, foreigners up and down called him "Mr. Gong".
In fact, this Englishman Wittoma has a deep relationship with China. He was a British diplomat and a well-known sinologist who had lived in China for more than forty years. The most important invention of his life was the use of the Roman alphabet to zhuyin for Chinese characters, that is, Wittoma Pinyin. However, since 1958, China has replaced Weituoma Pinyin with Hanyu Pinyin, and this British person rarely mentions it.
Back to Gong Orange. Men become bad when they have money, and this law of course applies to Gong Orange. Since working under Wittema with a high salary, Gong Orange, who has money and leisure, has vividly expressed his lustful manly nature.
The old wife in the family, Gong Orange after the flying yellow Tengda, and she "did not see each other for more than ten years". In Shanghai, he quickly adopted a beautiful concubine, which is said to be a famous prostitute in Shanghai, with unusual beauty, especially a pair of small feet, which is particularly pitiful.
This Gong orange, from now on the day of the sound of dogs and horses, drunken dream song upstairs. Suddenly, the young and absurd days of the early years returned. Only this time, instead of nibbling on the old ben and sitting on the mountain and eating the sky, it was leaning on Wei Tuma, the god of foreign wealth.
Gong Orange has a younger brother, named Gong Nianzai, who once came to Shanghai to see him, the brother of his wife who has not seen chaff for more than ten years, and treats his brother who comes to visit him, who is also indifferent as a passerby.
Gong Orange once commented on himself that he had no monarchs, fathers and sons, couples, brothers, and friends, but he was greedy for the beauty of the concubines and could not give up, and Wulun went to four and a half, so he called himself Gong Banlun in his later years.
Within a few years of working as an aide and translator under Wittoma, Gong Orange caught up with the major historical events that would later leave him with a name for eternity.
In 1860, the Second Opium War broke out, and Gong Orange, who was revered by foreigners as Mr. Gong, was warmly invited by the British envoy Erjin and others, and at the end of June of that year, he set out from Shanghai with them, took a warship, and went north to Beijing and Tianjin.
This was not enough, and then the Anglo-French coalition army captured the city of Beijing, the Xianfeng Emperor fled to Rehe, and on October 6, the British and French troops invaded the Yuanmingyuan, and Gong Orange rode into the front first, returning with a full load.
In the Battle of Gengshen, the British entered the capital with a division ship, burned the Yuanmingyuan, half-lunshi went together, rode first, took the gold and jade heavy weapon to return, and sat down to be criticized by people. ("The Twenty-third Birthday of the New Age")
After burning the Yuanmingyuan with the British and French troops, Gong Orange made a lot of money. Seeing that this piece of treasure from the qing court's inner palace was all collected by him one by one, Gong Orange, who truly realized the freedom of wealth, the first thing he did was to immediately resign from the foreign errand with a monthly salary of more than 10,000 yuan in Wei Toma, and the second thing was to buy a beautiful woman again, and then rely on the money obtained from the sale of cultural relics and paintings and gold and jade heavy objects, Gong Orange once again lived a life of poverty and luxury, paper drunkenness and gold fans.
Such a ridiculous life of spending days and drinking, drunken dreams and deaths, Gong Orange lasted for nearly ten years, after his life crossed the hurdle of 50 years old, in the early years because of the debauchery of life, all kinds of diseases fell, one by one, like poisonous mushrooms after the rain.
In the last two years of his life, Shi Zai Gong Orange "went crazy", that is, the symptoms of mental disorders, madness and other schizophrenia, and even to the extent of "self-inflicted", it was really disgusting.
After two years of suffering, 53-year-old Gong Orange, after "falling all over the body", only a handful of dry bones were left, and finally died in pain.
Because all the money and wealth were squandered by him before he died, his son had long been driven out of the house by him in order to oppose him one concubine after another, and the father and son had different messages for several years, so after Gong Orange's death, only two or three former friends sold his books and reluctantly completed a humble funeral for him.
People say that everything is fine after death, but for Gong Orange, this is not the case. More than thirty years after his death, a very famous novel was published, called "The Flower of the Evil Sea".
In this novel, the author directly writes that Gong Orange took LinkedIn army to break into the Yuanmingyuan, and he also preemptively plundered a large number of treasures and heavy weapons. After some looting, the Anglo-French army burned the Yuanmingyuan to the ground.
Since "The Flower of the Evil Sea", wild history notes novels such as "The Great View of the Wild History of the Qing Dynasty", "Examination of the Destruction of the Yuanmingyuan", "Notes on the South Pavilion", etc., have recorded that Gong Orange led the way to the British and French coalition forces and burned the Yuanmingyuan.
Since then, Gong Orange has changed from a participant to a pathfinder, more notorious, and everyone scolded. Although for Gong Orange, it is really a bit wronged, but it is also his own fault.
His life was uninhibited, profligate, and mercurial, and his behavior was strange, and his speech was even more shocking, although he had a full belly to learn, these many shortcomings were stained, in fact, more poignant, so since the novelist's words, the Yuanmingyuan affair was falsely rumored, and finally Gong Orange left a name in the folk, which is also reasonable.
Thinking back to the superstitious saying that Gong Zizhen and his wife were begging for a son at the Three Pagoda Temple, and the superstitious saying that the evil dragon reincarnated to the son, and then look at Gong Orange's life, although he was full of knowledge, he was not close to human feelings, was mercurial, and squandered and hedonistic, saying that he was a wicked dragon was really not exaggerated.
Author: We invite the author to be the lord of the Noon Dream Hall