In 1857, the Second Opium War broke out. The governor of Liangguang, Ye Mingchen, was captured, and it is said that the large ziye lord, who was one meter and eight meters tall, was like a wooden chicken when facing foreign devils, "no war, no peace, no defense, no death, no surrender, no departure, the belly of the minister, the ambition of the frontier subject, the ancient place, and it is rare today." He is known as the "Governor of the Six Noes". In Calcutta, he wrote poems, painted, and met guests until the rice he brought from China was eaten, so he went on a hunger strike and died "without eating Zhou Su".
Ye Mingchen, a native of Hanyang, Hubei Province, was a fifteen-year jinshi of Daoguang, who was promoted from the Governor of Guangdong to the Governor of Liangguang in 1852.
Two years later, The body of Lord Ye was transported back from Calcutta. Although the people have blackened him out, Ye is a high-ranking official after all, and the memorial service will still be held. If you want to have a memorial service, you must write a letter. In the face of such a special person, it is impossible to say neither good nor bad things openly, nor can we say a common nonsense. How difficult it is to write about this link.
In the end, the task of writing a bang for Ye Mingchen fell to the famous scholar Chen Li, known as "Mr. Dongshu". Chen Li's couplet is very cleverly written:
Public opinion is in the human world, only because of ten years of deep gratitude, it is difficult to forbid tears;
The soul returns overseas, wants to see a grievance, turned into waves!
The opening sentence "Public opinion is in the human world" is very flattering: in the eyes of patriots, the deceased is a fool; and the relatives and friends of the deceased read it: the hereafter has its own public opinion. Immediately after that, Chen Li no longer dwelled on the performance of the deceased's resistance to the British, but emphasized two things:
I. Distinguish between public and private: I am a native of Guangdong, and the deceased, as the governor of Liangguang, has "ten years of deep gratitude" to me. Chinese pay attention to the knowledge of gratitude, so it is the common sentiment of people to go to the hanging, and there is nothing wrong with it.
Second, win sympathy: Ye Mingchenke died in a foreign country, which is particularly unfortunate. Chinese pay attention to the roots of the fallen leaves, we can no longer let him turn his anger, but to help him into the ground.
Indeed, these words are not leaky, not praised or depreciated by the public, and reasonable in private. This routine, more than a hundred years later, the celebrity Zhang Shizhao also learned. The elegy he wrote for Dai Kasa, the head of the Central Unification Secret Service, is also textbook-level. On March 17, 1946, Dai died in a plane crash on his way from Beiping to Shanghai to Nanjing, and Zhang wrote a pair of elegies:
Born for the country, died for the country, ordinary life has a chivalrous style, and the coffin of merit and sin is still undecided;
Reputation is all over the world, slander is all over the world, and the spring and autumn events of the chaotic world are left for future generations to comment.
This is also the level. No matter how much criticism you have about Dai, whether it is the executioner or the head of the secret service, I will not say it anyway, but only say that he lived and died for the country, and also grasped on an advantage that is not an advantage: chivalry. The lower link only talks about the phenomenon, not humble and unobtrusive, with the Spring and Autumn brushwork, and finally leave the right and wrong to posterity to comment.