Yan Song (严嵩), also spelled Huaizhong, was born in the sixteenth year of Chenghua (1480), and the capital of Yuanzhou in Jiangxi was pleasant. Yan Song's early childhood education was quite successful, it is said that he learned to write at the age of three, and by the age of six he could already recite the Four Books and Five Classics, but the most powerful thing was that at the age of eight, Yan Song was admitted to the county school as an excellent child because of his excellent grades, and the Qingguan Hairui was twenty-eight years old as a child, and there were many children who could not pass the county school at the age of sixty or seventy, in contrast, Yan Song was really a promising teenager.
Until the eighth year of Hongzhi (1495), the sixteen-year-old Yan Song was ready to participate in the township examination, the luggage was ready, not coincidentally, his father died, which was really a sad thing, so Yan Song had to keep filial piety at home for three years, because according to the regulations of the Ming Dynasty, the dead father must be at home for three years, and three years later, Yan Song went to Nanchang with his father's will and full of ambitions, and in one fell swoop, the gold list was titled.
Yan Song's township examination results are very good, so for the second year's examination, he himself is very confident, but the fact made a big joke with him, the name luosun Mountain, Yan Song had to sigh, chose to repeat the study, to prepare for the exam three years later, the result is how much disappointment there is, Yan Song failed again. It is said that failure is success, Yan Song did not give up, he believed that he would be able to succeed, so he went to the exam for the third time, but this time he did not hold out any hope, and if he could not pass the exam, he was ready to be a working youth. But God made a joke with him again, a well-intentioned joke, and he unexpectedly passed the exam, and he won the second place in the second division. There are only three people in the first division (Champion, Bangyan, Tanhua), so the second place in the second place is the fifth place in the country, such a result is quite good, Yan Song is surprised that he can take the test so well, he thinks that the time to change his fate has come. In the first year of Zhengde (1506), Yan Song was elected hanlin and became a Shujishi, at the age of twenty-seven.
Stills of the elderly Yan Song
In the fourth year of Zhengde (1509), Yan Song's mother died, he was a very filial person, after the death of his father, his mother raised him with hard work for him to study for the exam, which was really bad news for the young Yan Song, so that he was once too sad and almost died, and Yan Song, who was extremely sad, made a very brave decision at this time: resign his official and go home. This is an admirable choice, a promising young man, in order to repay his mother's nurturing grace, resolutely returned home to keep filial piety, twenty-seven-year-old Yan Song is indeed superior. At the end of the three-year period of filial piety, the imperial court repeatedly ordered him to be recruited to serve the country in Beijing, but Yan Song refused: "Adulterers are in charge, and they cannot be with them under the circumstances", what an upright person Yan Song was at that time.
But after ten years of seclusion, he agreed to the invitation of a person and went out to the mountains again as an official, this person was Yang Tinghe, the first assistant of the cabinet, in Yan Song's view, Yang Tinghe was the pillar of the imperial court, and more importantly, in the year of Yan Song's high school, he had the wisdom to recognize the talents, and the person who praised him was Yang Tinghe.
In the eleventh year of Zhengde (1516), Yan Song officially came out of the mountain and served as the editor of the Hanlin Academy, a low-level petty official and a small official who did nothing. In June of the fourteenth year of Zhengde (1519), on the way back from Yan Song's mission, The Heavens made a joke with him again and sent him to the wrong place at the wrong time. Because of the rebellion of King Ning, Yan Song hid, and hid more thoroughly, and the capital did not go, so the trustee took a leave of absence and went directly back to his hometown. In this way, Yan Song lived a day of recuperation again, but the heavens were destined to let him appear, and two years later, Zhu Houzhao died, Yang Ting and the acting government, in Yan Song's view, the time to serve the country came. In the sixteenth year of Zhengde (1521), Yan Song officially entered Beijing, and his life changed completely. But as soon as he entered Beijing, Yan Song found that the situation was not right, and he went to visit his teacher Yang Tinghe, but Yang Tinghe was lukewarm to him, which made him feel embarrassed. In fact, the page is not that Yang Tinghe does not want to ignore him, but that Yang Tinghe is busy with a big thing and cannot take care of Yan Song. This year, Yan Song was forty-one years old, an age that did not go up and down, the seniors retired, the peers were promoted, the juniors looked down on him, and he became a child that no one wanted. The official of the Ministry of Rites thought about it for a long time, and felt that this man was really useless, and he could not squeeze out the oil and water, so he sent him to the Nanjing Hanlin Courtyard, a place where ghosts were ignored, but Yan Song had no choice but to honestly go to Nanjing to report. But it was this immoral work that saved his life and brought him a bright future. Because at this moment in the capital, an unprecedented storm is being set off, and the results of the struggle are well known, in this fierce political struggle, Yang Tinghe stepped down, and a new generation of powerful people took the stage. Yan Song's luck is really good, when the accident occurred in Nanjing, there was no door and no party, every day is to drink tea, walk the dog, the day is quite moist. But Yan Song did know very well that the day of his flying yellow Tengda had come, and although his teacher Yang Tinghe had failed, he still had a very good friend and fellow countryman, Gui Cao. Sure enough, soon after, news came from the capital that Yan Song was transferred from Nanjing to Beijing, and was promoted to the third level in a row, serving as the supreme governor of the Guozi Supervisor, a department. The bumpy life and the hypocritical officialdom made Yan Song understand a truth - left and right Fengyuan. After this began, Yan Song entered the fast lane of his career and began his counterattack journey.