Yan Song (1480-1567) was a Han Chinese poet of the Yi Dynasty,1505(1505) of the Han Dynasty. He was a famous courtier of the Ming Dynasty, who was good at ruling the country for 20 years, and gradually became a bureaucrat Shangshu, a scholar of the Imperial Household, a young master and a prince, a young master, and a scholar of the Huagaidian University. At the age of 63, he entered the cabinet. Yan Song is deeply accomplished in calligraphy and is good at writing green words (actually ghostwrited by others).
The History of the Ming Dynasty lists Yan Song as one of the six traitors of the Ming Dynasty, saying that he "only intends to flatter and steal power and profits." Through operas, literary and artistic works, and historical classics, Yan Song's image of a traitorous courtier has penetrated deeply into the folk.
Yan Song, a famous traitorous minister of the Ming Dynasty, was the first assistant of the official for more than ten years, and his property after being raided was not as good as that of Xu Jie, a famous loyal minister of the same era
Yan Song has been the first assistant for more than ten years, and the reason why he was scolded as a traitor was to control the government, mutilate Zhongliang, and wantonly amass wealth;
On the contrary, Xu Jie, Zhang Juzheng and other first assistants, the folk and even the history books have a very good reputation, but their wealth is not up to the famous corrupt official Yan Song.
Personally, I think they are all greedy, even more than the greed of other people's traitors, and I don't know what famous political achievements, Zhang Juzheng is also a reformer no matter how he says, there are still political achievements, Mr. Xu Jie seems to be the most famous thing in his life is to fight yan Song, nothing more than factional struggle, what does it have to do with the common people? Why has the evaluation of these two people been very different for hundreds of years?
Analyze it from several perspectives
Fame is what outsiders think of you, and Xu Jie has brought face to face during his tenure as an official.
Xu Jie was first born as a jinshi, and the middle tanhua, which was considered to be a root and miaohong, was a large number of people in the same year after becoming an official, and several of his examinations as the main examination also produced a group of talents. In the Imperial Examination of the Ming Dynasty, the chief examiner of the subject you examined, you had to recognize him as a teacher, and since then your political life has been closely linked, and students cannot disobey the teacher. Academically, he was the leader of Wang Yangming's xinxue at that time, and he insisted on lecturing during his tenure as an official, and every five or six days, no matter how busy his work was, he also had to go on stage to preach, so his reputation in Shilin was very good. At that time, Gao Gong attacked him for over-teaching and not doing his job.
Secondly, the biggest terrible thing about Xu Jie is that he can endure and pretend. When Yan Song was on the stage, Xu Jie served as a secondary assistant and did everything to please Yan Song and the Jiajing Emperor. He saw that Yan Song was favored for providing Qingzi to Emperor Jiajing and helping him cultivate, so he wrote to Jiajing several times, saying that he hoped to help the emperor refine Dan. After writing a few times, Jiajing began to entrust some things related to cultivation to Xu Jie, who also helped him protect the Fa when the emperor was in concentration, and danced with the gods when he asked for gods. It is said that in the letter to Yan Song, Xu Jie said that he was treating Yan Song in the same way that he treated his father with his predecessors, which made Yan Song relax his vigilance to a certain extent. For outside public opinion, Xu Jie pretended to be a wounded daughter-in-law. At that time, people called Xu Jie "licorice country old", that is, licorice was peaceful in The middle, but the taste was too sweet, the medicinal effect was too slow, and the irony xu jie was an old and good person, and there was no determination. In fact, how can someone who can fight Yan Song be an old and good person who has no decisive power? Xu Jie owned 240,000 mu of fertile land in his hometown, and Yan Song owned only one-fifteenth of Xu Jie's land. Such a rich man, pretending to be cautious in the capital, told him that there were many places in his hometown, and after finding out, it was just a matter of not being strict under the emperor. Later, Gao Gong took office and demanded that the Xu family retire from the field, and for all reasons, he only sentenced Xu Jie's two sons to exile, and did not have much impact on his own reputation.
Third, Xu Jie knows how to buy people's hearts. Hai Rui was saved by Xu Jie. In the Ming Dynasty, it was a very famous thing to speak with death, after the Hai Rui incident, the public opinion of the world fell to Hai Rui, and Xu Jie saved Hai Rui by hand, and he got a large amount in the merit book. Moreover, after Jiajing's death, Xu Jie proposed a will, rehabilitated a group of officials who had been overthrown by Yan Songdou, stopped several palaces that Jiajing was repairing at that time, and helped to alleviate some of the shortcomings of the Jiajing Dynasty during the Longqing Dynasty, and it was believed that he had the merit of rectifying the chaos. Others do not say for the time being, at least the officials who have been rehabilitated, the officials who have been bribed by Xu Jie, the same subjects and students of Xu Jie, and the ordinary people who have slightly improved their quality of life can all benefit from it to a greater or lesser extent, of course, they must praise Xu Jie.
Another reason is that in the Wanli Dynasty after Long Qing's death, Zhang Juzheng was in office. As Xu Jie's favorite student, Zhang Juzheng will more or less save some face for his teacher, after all, if Xu Jie is stinked, he will not have a good life as a student. Moreover, in the competition for the throne between the two princes of the Jiajing Dynasty, Zhang Juzheng also made many plans for Xu Jie. Xu Jie privately went up to Yan Song to support King Rui, while Zhang Juzheng and Gao Gong, who was also Yu Wang's teacher, tried to step on two boats. This political game has made Zhang Juzheng and Xu Jie closely linked.
In fact, I personally think that the reason why Yan Song was so miserable in the end was because of Yan Shifan. Yan Song was rational while being greedy and chaotic. He did not make too many mistakes in basic national policy, and at the same time knew how to promote talents and not to be nepotistic. As a son, Yan Shifan, who was then serving as shangshu of the Ministry of Works, privately engaged in all kinds of embezzlement and selling official power and money transactions, and he did not know how to restrain it. Yan Shifan's nickname "Qing'er", the number "East Building", the author of "Jin Ping Mei" "Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng" turned "East Building" into "West Gate", directly using the "Qing" character as the name, creating Ximen Qing, to allude to Yan Shifan's absurd and unruly life.
In fact, you said that when an official reaches that level, the person who is an official himself does not have much choice. Deal with the state apparatus, deal with imperial power, deal with the greed of his subordinates and his own, face the desire for power. Whether it is a famous courtier or a corrupt official, in fact, the difference is not so big. Although the Yellow River is turbid, it can also be irrigated; although the Yangtze River is clear, it also floods.