Writing About Li Yan was a painful process, not to mention his voluminous works, not to mention his maverick thoughts, and not to mention his life of good fortune, his death was painful and even more shocking.
In the prison in Tongzhou, Beijing, the seventy-six-year-old Li Zhenning died unyieldingly, did not repent of what he had done, and finally cut his throat with a razor, bleeding for two days. Whenever I think of this scene, I feel sick to my stomach. What kind of person is this? What era did he live in? What is he doing, thinking, and trying to leave his own to future generations?
Li Yan is a big book and a heavy puzzle.
Regarding Li Zhen, I will use a thirty-thousand-word article to explain him, and here I would like to talk about Li Zhen's Quanzhou.
One day six years ago, on the occasion of the China Maritime Silk Road Cultural Festival, I had the privilege of walking into Li Zhen's Quanzhou and approaching Li Zhen in Quanzhou, and it was in his simple former residence that I deeply understood Li Zhen, understood his wang yang's arbitrariness and unruliness, and his righteousness was awe-inspiring and righteous.
Today's China, Beijing and Shanghai are world-famous international metropolises, but in the Song and Yuan dynasties more than a thousand years ago, Quanzhou was already one of the best commercial and trade centers in China and even the world. What exactly makes Quanzhou brilliant? What made Li Zhen, an eclectic pioneer or rebel who was not tolerated by his time?
Many early mornings, I looked up at the ancient bell tower in Quanzhou, listened to the bells ringing, and watched the busy flow of people and bustling cars in the old city; many dusks, I walked across the Ping'an Bridge, walked past the Kaiyuan Temple, the fishing songs on the bridge were sung late, the sound was endless, and the wooden mallets in the temple struck the wooden fish, majestic and turbulent. The beauty of the mountains and rivers is the most in the southeast. Quanzhou, the ancient land of Baiyue, the Western Zhou is the land of Seven Fujian, the Han-style ancient house with swallowtail ridge, the Fanzai Lou where Chinese and Western are combined... Tells the history of Quanzhou.
Five generations ago, the seeds of a tropical plant from Malaysia were brought to the Min Yue Kingdom. This plant, called the thorn tree, is beautiful and unique, with flowers with independent branches, such as the wings of a crane, and in the distance, like clusters of red xia. In the Yuan Dynasty, Quanzhou began to cultivate this plant extensively. Since then, the thorn trees have taken root and blossomed here, and Quanzhou has been called "Thorn Tong City", and now, Quanzhou Mancheng has a figure of thorn trees blooming everywhere. In this ancient and modern city, Quanzhou City shows its unique charm - low-key and calm but maintaining sharpness, ancient vicissitudes and vitality, implicit and introverted and more open and inclusive.
The interruption of the overland Silk Road in the north gave Quanzhou the opportunity of the era of its rise as a port. The westernmost territory of the Northern Song Dynasty only reached the vicinity of today's Hehuang Valley. At that time, because of the complexity of the Hexi Corridor regime, the territory of the Song Dynasty never occupied the land west of the Wusheling Mountains, and thus lost control of the Hexi Corridor. The Northern Song Dynasty's control over the Northern Silk Road had been increasingly lost, and with the relocation of the Song capital from Chang'an-Luoyang to Bieliang, the eastward shift of the political center would inevitably lead to the decline of the overland Silk Road. At the same time, during the Two Song Dynasties, China's economic center of gravity began to gradually complete the southward shift, and the southern economy gradually surpassed the north from the beginning of the Anshi Rebellion, until the Southern Song Dynasty moved the capital to Lin'an, and the south completely completed the transcendence of the north. At the same time, merchants from South and Central Asia, in pursuit of high profits, braved the dangerous waves from the sea through the Strait of Malacca to China.
It is in this context that Quanzhou has become an important station on the Maritime Silk Road.
According to Marco Polo, Quanzhou had merchants from many countries at that time, such as Dashi, Srivijaya, Chenla, and Champa. The Italian Jewish merchant Jacob d'Ancona wrote The City of Light, the cover of which reads: "Before Marco Polo, an Italian Jewish merchant ventured to the East, and his destination was a Chinese city called the City of Light. "People from all walks of life from all over the world gather here with the world's most advanced technology, the most fashionable art, the most delicious food, the most diverse culture, and the most inclusive faith. Zhu Xi, the Great Confucian, once had this evaluation of Quanzhou: This place was called the Buddha's Kingdom in ancient times, and the streets were full of saints. Master Hongyi felt that he would soon die, and chose Quanzhou to entrust the rest of his life. It was here that he wrote a letter in advance about the date of his death to several acquaintances like Xia Junzun, and then wrote down the final pen - "The Intersection of Sorrow and Joy".
Li Yan lives here. (Li Fang)