Re-acquainting Cai Jinghe with the "Cai Jing New Deal" in the late Northern Song Dynasty

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Cai Jing is a rare and peculiar figure in Chinese history, who served as the prime minister of the late Northern Song Dynasty for more than 18 years, and was a major minister who had a major impact on the political, economic and artistic development of the late Northern Song Dynasty, but because of the "difficulty of Jing Kang", he was criticized and scolded, and Zhang Juzheng, the prime minister of the Ming Dynasty, even denounced Cai Jing as the head of the "Six Thieves" in his book "Emperor Jian Tu shu". Cai Jing is also a recognized calligrapher in the history of Chinese art, and Mr. Qi Gong gave a high evaluation in the final sentence of the book, believing that his calligraphy achievements were "the pioneer of the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty". How to evaluate the "Cai Jing New Deal" implemented by Cai Jing after Wang Anshi in the late Northern Song Dynasty is also an academic problem that needs to be studied in depth.

For a long time, Cai Jing's labeled and facial image of "traitor" has existed in various historical books. The author of this book has extensive history books, hooked and explored the shadows, picked up gold in the sand, fully absorbed the latest research results of the historical circles, placed Cai Jing in a complex and vast historical context, and tried to objectively and subtly present the complex political ecology of the change of imperial power and the struggle between friends and parties in the late Northern Song Dynasty, as well as the rich and diverse personality elements of Cai Jing and his people, analyze their multi-dimensional and multi-faceted spiritual maps, and return the original appearance of historical figures to give more mirrors and thinking to today's people.

Text / Chen Xingeng

In China's thousands of years of feudal history, the Great Song Dynasty is indeed a dynasty that people cannot taste; it is a dynasty that can be examined from countless different dimensions; it is a dynasty that produces the "three hundred stacks of green mountains on the stream" like a giant public and famous sage, and it is also a dynasty that breeds a large number of giant traitors and clowns who have been left behind for thousands of years; the spirit of the scholars is extremely flamboyant and the rags that tick with sewage are unevenly wrapped around the pillars of this dynasty; no dynasty has a galaxy-like brilliant poetry like the Song Dynasty. No dynasty like the Song Dynasty makes people feel particularly "hearted", "bad hearted" and "painful"...

The peculiarity of this dynasty is that it provides an unprecedented and huge space for interpretation for future generations.

Saying that "there is no Song Dynasty after the Song Dynasty" is nothing wrong with this statement. But this is a neutral statement, without praise or disparagement. At least for me.

The development of engraving and printing technology in the Song Dynasty has made a qualitative leap in publishing and dissemination compared with the past, and the revolutionary change of this "leap" is no less than the "leap" from traditional paper publishing to Internet technology today. The convenience of printing and dissemination has made the writings of the literati rich, diverse, and mixed from this dynasty, providing a large number of historical materials for future generations to study the characters and events of this dynasty; it has also shrouded a lot of fog that obscures the truth. There are the main histories of the court, and there are also the folk literati who record various personal experiences and rumors of wild history. According to scholars, Su Dongpo may be the first poet in the history of Chinese poetry to publish a personal poetry collection.

In terms of the prosperity of culture, it can be juxtaposed with the Great Song Dynasty, before which only the Hundred Sons and Hundred Families were another peak, and the May Fourth New Culture Movement after that was another peak. Even so, historians do not believe that the cultural prosperity of the Song Dynasty and the European Renaissance can be equated. Because the social and economic development backgrounds of the two are different. More importantly, the literati of the Two Song Dynasties did not have the consciousness of cultural creation as a whole. Their main point of interest is still in politics, and literature and art are both "politics" (small roads). The Song Dynasty's long-term atmosphere of governing the country with a wide range of "literature" and "martial" made most literati mistakenly believe that it was their duty to save the world's lives, who knew that the heart was higher than the sky, the fate was thinner than paper, and the ideal often turned into a wisp of green smoke. In such a bumpy and turbulent fate that could not be stretched and could not be expressed, the literati of the Song Dynasty regarded cultural creation as the best vent for emotional intensive catharsis. Cultural peaks that soar into the sky are thus able to stand in the collective unconscious.

Exquisite poems written in distress, tribulation, and even despair are like flowers blooming in the snow and ice. Reading Song Ci often reminds me of the Sydney blossoms that cover the hillsides on the Sichuan-Tibet border. The tender petals fluttering in the wind hold snow grains. Of course, it often reminds me of the blacksmith's shop, the iron section smelted by the fire, the spark splashed under the blow of the hammer.

"Lost in the east, harvested in the mulberry elm." This is also true!

In recent years, the writing of this dynasty seems to have been a "blowout" phenomenon, and fictional and non-fictional, popular popular narratives and elite research results can be piled up, which has brought convenience and obstacles to new writing. Looking at it only from the perspective of research, the unreliable text of random fabrication and misjudgment and speculation coexists with rigorous research and honest writing with one saying and one saying, which often requires us to spend a lot of energy to identify. For this reason, I did not know how much money I wasted, after buying many books, I casually turned a few pages, and found that there was no reading and reference value, so I had to abandon one side and clean up the garbage.

New writers also face a difficulty, that is, some tempting writing objects or events have been repeatedly "chewed" by others many times, such as Fan Zhongyan, Wang Anshi, Su Dongpo, Sima Guang, Liu Yong, Li Qingzhao, Xin Zhiyi, Wen Tianxiang, etc., can search for multiple versions of the biography. Of course, the real professional, authoritative, and fine products that can withstand the washing of time are still lacking. Even if there is a version of Lin Yutang before the biography of Su Dongpo, followed by Li Yibing's "New Biography of Su Dongpo", and a variety of works written by contemporary scholars recently, each with its own advantages and strengths, but also with obvious flaws and limitations, an ideal biography of Su Dongpo is still in anticipation...

Although in terms of the richness and comprehensiveness of historical materials, the author also had the impulse to write a Su biography, but he thought twice and then gave up. Because Su Dongpo's little thing has been chewed up by countless writers. I understood that it was necessary to find an uncultivated "virgin land" to cover up the lack of pen power to some extent.

In recent years, when reading the historical materials of the Song Dynasty, the feelings that burst out intermittently have been sorted into short texts and collected in the collection of essays on "What to Talk About Style and Elegance". Next, after repeated deliberation, it was decided to choose Cai Jing, a famous figure who had a vigorous performance history at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, as the object of the author's focus. This special figure, which many Song writers have ignored, such as the reef in the sea, has repeatedly inspired the impulse in my heart to paint a portrait of it. As for why Cai Jing was chosen as the object of writing and dissection, the author has briefly stated it in the preface.

Speaking of Cai Jing, anyone who understands history will say that he is not a "giant traitor" who has long been nailed to the pillar of historical shame and almost drowned in people's spit? Not only is it a "giant traitor", but also the head of the "six thieves". Zhang Juzheng, the chancellor of the Ming Dynasty, once compiled a popular and interesting textbook with literary and graphic collocation for the little emperor, called:"Emperor Jian Tu Said". The book is divided into two parts, the upper part is "Shengzhe Fanggui" and the lower part is "Crazy Fool Rut", and two opposing typical cases are introduced from historical records, a total of 117 cases. The former are both positive cases that can be used as models, and the latter are negative cases that should be used as a lesson for the past. The last story in the lower part, "Appointing the Six Thieves", mainly talks about how Cai Jing became a "thief", and its text is quoted from the History of Song. In "The Face of the Novel", Foster divides the character image of the novel into two categories: one is "flat character", with distinctive characteristics and easy to identify; the other is "round character", with a diverse personality and difficult to identify. This book is not a novel, and Cai Jing is not a fictional character, he is a real "this one" in history. So, to borrow Foster's classification, does Cai Jing belong to the former, or does it belong to the latter?

In my opinion, he is a composite of the two. Its characteristics are so simple that they can be summed up in one sentence; their complexity may not be clearly described even if you write a book. Therefore, I dare not say that this "Cai Jing Ups and Downs" has fully presented the richness and complexity of Cai Jing and his people.

Cai Jing like

When writing "Cai Jing's Ups and Downs", I always think of Stephen Zweig's "Portrait of a Political Figure". In his early years, I read this book and his other influential collection of historical nonfiction works, When the Stars of Humanity Shine. Portrait depicts a controversial politician, Joseph Foucher, who was active in French politics from the 18th to the 19th centuries.

However, choosing to take the ups and downs of Cai Jingshi's eunuchs as a clue and present the political ecology of the late Northern Song Dynasty at the same time, in order to write a book, is not because of the trigger of Zweig's works, but in recent years, when he continued to read the relevant historical books of the Song Dynasty, he suddenly burst out of his brain. I think that Cai Jing is too intriguing to chew, and so far there is no informative non-fiction text describing this person's image, which makes people sigh. In the collection of historical materials, although I found several texts about Cai Jing published a few years ago, I was disappointed after reading them. Its novelization, facialization, and simplification make this kind of text neither the tension of pure fiction narrative and the texture of language, nor the rigor and reliability of historical facts—wandering in the fictional and non-fiction gray areas of non-donkey and non-horse, which is exactly what I do not like.

Since I couldn't find the ideal text, I also gained a little confidence in my writing.

Cai Jing, a historical figure, is obviously not of interest to the current writers - he is not a great man who can become a model of the times. Most writers disdain to paint a portrait of a controversial figure who seems to have been firmly nailed to the column of historical shame. This person has irreplaceable cognitive value and literary research value in ancient and modern times, and every Chinese can find his own shadow from him. In your cells, it's hard to clear the genes he inherits. This has nothing to do with the family, region, or era environment in which you were born, but with a deep-rooted cultural soil.

Cai Jingqi and Zweig's Joseph Foucher have many striking similarities.

Zweig described it in Portrait of a Political Figure: "Joseph Foucher, one of the most powerful figures of his time and one of the most peculiar figures in history; his contemporaries lacked affection for him, and later generations were even more unfair to him." All parties and historians, as soon as his name is mentioned, vent their hatred to the end of their pens: "a natural traitor, a despicable schemer, a slippery reptile, a master of the seller's glory, a shameless and vulgar spy, a morally depraved clown..." But almost no one has seriously examined his personality. Zweig said: "Purely out of interest in the science of mind, I wrote the story of Joseph Foucher very suddenly as a contribution to the biology of the Kwon sorcerer. The Magician is an extremely dangerous spiritual race in the world in which we live that has not yet been fully studied..."

The simple analogy between Cai Jing and Fu Xie obviously ignores the uniqueness and complexity of their respective differences. Chinese historians and literati always like to label and faceted characters, such as non-"loyal" or "adulterous", non-"gentleman" or "villain". In fact, in the long corridor of history, no number of famous and prominent figures can distinguish the two as clearly as the Chu River Han Realm. Cai Jing's complexity lies in the fact that he is both "adulterous" and "male". I understand "rape" and "male" as two separate words. He can embody "adultery" to the extreme, beyond ordinary "adultery"; he can also exert "male" to the extreme, beyond the ordinary "male". This "xiong" can also be interpreted twice: there is both the meaning of "the extreme of adultery" and the meaning of "xionghao". His "adultery" may have only hastened the fall of a dynasty. In the long river of time, the harm was very short; his "male" may have been passed on by posterity, and it continues endlessly, and we still enjoy his wisdom and creation. For example, he built nursing homes (for the elderly, widows, the poor and sick), Anjifang (medical clinics), Leaky Zeyuan (burial cemeteries for the poor), xingnu, medicine, calligraphy and painting, in this regard, it can be said that he has expanded and extended Wang Anshi's transformation method, and his innovations in these fields may be greater than those of some of the great heroes that we often talk about. There is also his art of calligraphy, which also occupies an indelible place in the history of Chinese calligraphy.

Cai Jing's most criticized crime is, of course, a heavy blow to the political enemy YuanYou, so that they no longer have the opportunity to turn over. But this party's act of fighting against differences did not start with Cai Jing. It was precisely the Yuanyou party members who listed the first list of the Qing Party in the late Northern Song Dynasty after YuanYou's victory; it was also when they implemented the Yuanyou reformation that they deposed Cai Qing, the most core figure of the law-changing faction at that time, to Lingnan Xinzhou, and set a precedent for the Northern Song Dynasty to demote the zaifu-level ministers to the land of Lingnan Miasma. The New Party had tortured Su Shi by fabricating the "Wutai Poetry Case" with poetry, while the Yuanyou Party members fabricated a more outrageous "Che Gai Ting Poetry Case" and deported Cai Qing to Lingnan Xinzhou, resulting in Cai Qike's death and exile. From this work, we can see that in the late Northern Song Dynasty, the methods of fighting between friends and parties became more and more cruel and despicable, and both sides had a relationship that could not be escaped. From this, we can also see that chinese literati are more "hateful", more "fierce", more "deceitful", more "poisonous", and more "black" than each other because of the struggle for interests, and they will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. It was in this environment of mutual vicious fighting that Cai Jing became a sinner and adulterer who was hated by the world and scolded by the ages. To hold the party accountable for the crime of fighting each other, how can Cai Jing be allowed to carry it on his shoulders?

In the vicious struggle between the New Party and the Yuanyou Party, the reason why later generations gave more compassion to the Yuanyou Party members was because there were several famous and famous great people among the Yuanyou Party, such as Su Dongpo, who was born with poetry, and Sima Guang, who was immortal in the historical work "Zizhi Tongjian". In addition, the "Jingkang Difficulty" has humiliated everyone in the New Party (not only Cai Jing), and even sage-level capable subjects such as Wang Anshi have been "villainized" for thousands of years. But from a political point of view, it is difficult to argue between the two factions. The Shangfa faction has a clear political stand, while the Yuanyou party members lack the backbone that can really govern the country and manage its finances.

Therefore, it is necessary for us to carefully examine the traces of historical figures in the fog-filled and complex historical context, so that we can draw a little more objective and fair conclusions. Is it a very valuable thing for the author to use a book to make a dialysis of the spiritual map for such a strange and complex historical figure, and to water a statue cast in iron for him? Let him stand on the side of the thoroughfare in his costume, his eyes wide open, and look at every pedestrian. Let the wind and rain blow, let the world spit and scold, let the naughty boy climb, let its rust crawl all over the vines...

An inscription by Cai Jing in "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains"

But he does not fall easily, he has a super anti-lodging ability.

His eyes can be wide open in the face of the hot sunlight.

Here I would like to give special thanks to two contemporary Song historians who have never met so far: first, Dr. Yang Xiaomin, her "Research on the Political Situation of Cai Jing, Cai Bian and the Late Northern Song Dynasty" provided me with the original guidance and historical clues for my interpretation of Cai Jingqi, and the second is Dr. Zeng Li, whose "Cai Jing Chronology" is an essential reference for my desk when writing Cai Jing. It can also be said that without these two academic works, this "Cai Jing Sinks and Downs" would not have been born. Without the basic research they have done, even if the author sits on the cold bench for many years, he may not be able to write the current "Cai Jing Sinks and Downs". Of course, there are many ancient and modern historians who need to be thanked, and the sources of historical materials are detailed in the text, and their names are not listed here.

Actually, why should I write Cai Jing? Those who have read the book can understand naturally; those who do not understand, no matter how much I talk about it here, still do not understand. Then let it drift with the wind like a boat, whether it is floating into a big river or drifting into a reed, will make the author feel a kind of satisfaction.

The first draft of the book was all written with a pen and a stroke. It's not that there's a retro-minded writing habit, but it's about reducing the amount of time your eyes are glued to your computer screen and making your eyesight decline more slowly with age. With the accumulation of desk manuscripts, the image of Cai Jingqi has become increasingly rich in the author's heart.

Cai Jing's life was as vigorous as a fiery cooking oil; it was also like a salted fish hanging on the wall, and it was actually resurrected with blood in the water; Cai Jing's life, like a climber of Mount Everest, climbed, climbed, and finally reached the top, but suddenly suffered an avalanche, and was suddenly buried in the valley bottom ice cave; Cai Jing's life, once flourished like a cluster of flowers, full of heaven and earthly bliss, but finally violently deserted the mountains, almost into a wild ghost with no return; Cai Jing's life, composed of black, red, and white, artists recognize that this combination of three colors is a perfect match for impacting vision. They are not clearly defined patches of color, but you have me, I have you...

(This excerpt is excerpted from Chen Xingeng's book "Cai Jing Shen Fu", which is authorized by the Writers Publishing House.) ）

| of Humanities and Social Sciences Chinese original | biography

"Cai Jing's Ups and Downs"

Chen Xingeng

Writers Press

March 2022

Chen Xingeng was the deputy director of the reporter department of the People's Liberation Army Daily, the president and editor-in-chief of the Literary Daily. He is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a director of the China Reportage Literature Society, a director of the Shanghai Writers Association, and a visiting professor of Shanghai University. He is the author of more than 10 novella collections such as "Lonely Island", short and medium-length reportage collections "Youth Station", "Icebergs Under the Sea", long-form reportage "Click on Future War", "Awakening on the Ruins", "Red Tragedy", "Memoirs of thieves", cultural criticism essay collection "Fast Talk Collection", "Who is the Culprit of Murder Literature", "Each Hit Fifty Big Boards", "Beauty Like a Jade Sword Like a Rainbow", etc. His works have been included in the Military Literature Department since the founding of New China. He has won various journalism and literature awards. In recent years, he has devoted himself to the writing of non-fiction works of literature and history, and has published a long biography of historical and cultural celebrities, "Sword Soul Rhyme: Gong Zizhen Biography", a collection of historical and cultural essays "He Talks About Elegance", and "Cai Jing's Sinking and Floating" as the third historical biography.

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