At the end of the Ming Dynasty, history was called "The Abyss of Chongzhen".
Just when the Daming Dynasty was in turmoil, Feng Menglong, a great literary scholar who was famous all over the world, was disappointed in several imperial examinations and had a bumpy career, and suddenly obtained the post of a seven-pin county order. With the grand ambition of cultivating Qi and governing the peace and entering politics and the world, he left the rich Jiangnan water town of Suzhou, and took his only son Feng Yan across thousands of mountains and rivers to the depths of the mountains of remote people and poverty-Shouning, Fujian.
Feng Menglong (1574-1646), a native of Changzhou County, Suzhou Prefecture, was a writer, thinker and opera scholar of the Ming Dynasty. From the seventh to the eleventh year of the reign of Ming Chongzhen (1634-1638), Feng Menglong was appointed to Shouningzhi County. During his reign in Shouning, he sought truth and pragmatism, worked diligently for the people, and preserved Shouning in the turmoil of the late Ming Dynasty and benefited the people. Qing Qianlong's "Funing Fuzhi Shouning Follower" said that he was "simple in government and punished, first in literature, with kindness to the people, and courteous to the people". (Source: Shouning County Feng Menglong Memorial Hall)
At this time, in Shouning, the city gate collapsed, the school palace collapsed, and the city was depressed. Although he is over 61 years old to serve the country, Feng Menglong still cherishes this opportunity to take up a new position. He was shocked by the poverty in sight, but he did not have the slightest discouragement, but decided that "Shouning can be"!
He wrote a poem:
Izuku looked at Xu Sheng, and the chaos was scattered.
Lotus flowers are golden, and dragon armor brocade is layered.
It seems to be embraced by thousands of waves, and the written five colors are condensed.
There is no need to account for too much history, Rui Qi knows the year.
- Feng Menglong, "Ruiyun"
This is the true mood of Feng Menglong, who embraces "the heart of the people with one thought", and his passion is full of benefits for the people.
Shouning original city walls. During the Jiajing period, the Wokou attacked the county twice, attacked the county seat, the city wall collapsed, and Duorenzhi County was unable to repair it. At night, tigers frequently enter the city, and the people live in panic.
Yu Ying's day in office, heard of the tiger riot outside Ximen, injured people and more than 100 people. The city gate has been abandoned for a long time, and the tiger goes to bite the pig dog at night.
- Feng Menglong, "Shouning Waiting for Zhi Tiger Storm"
Feng Menglong, who had just arrived in office, immediately realized that repairing the city gate and fighting tigers must be done for the safety of the people's lives and property. He learned that the Pingxi Zhou craftsmen would set traps to catch tigers, so he took people to Pingxi and begged the Zhou craftsmen to come out of the mountain to make traps.
Yu donated several tools, set up a place where tigers often traveled, each with two sheep, ordered the residents to watch over, and received one tiger reward and three gold. In half a year, three tigers were killed in a row in the back of the mountain, Xitou and Pingxi, and they were extinct.
- Feng Menglong, "Shouning Waiting for Zhi Tiger Storm"
It takes money to build walls and trap tigers. At this time, the county's finances were in deficit of more than 1,000 silver. Feng Menglong's application was fruitless, so he paid out of his own pocket and took the lead in donating. Feng Menglong "rebuilt the four gate towers, and built the collapse of the city". Juxtapose the big drum side, and arrange a special person to be responsible for night inspection. Seeing the defense needs of the county and the difficulty of drinking water and irrigation for the people, he organized personnel to build embankments and dams in the toad stream in the city. In just a few months, Feng Menglong also repaired county offices, warehouses, grain storage, prisons, standard shops, and various passes. These are all livelihood projects, and Li Min's vitality is gradually restored, and he lives and works in peace and contentment.
Feng Menglong learned that his predecessor Dai Boring was a good official who was honest and honest, pragmatic and pragmatic for the people, and left a reputation that made him admire him very much, so he built a "Dai Qing Pavilion" under the old plum tree next to the county office. And give a poem:
The county is in Cuiwei, and the floating house is like a brocade tent.
The three peaks enter the curtain in the south, and the ten thousand trees cover the city in the north.
The remoteness is difficult to reach, and the mountains are cloudy and easy to live.
Old Mei Biao is cold, and I am with Er Tongqing.
- Feng Menglong, "Dai Qingting"
In the poem, "Lao Mei Biao is cold, I am clear with Er", with Gao Leng Lao Mei encouraging himself, and the rhyme is unique. "Dai Qingting" stands tall today. The tree in front of the pavilion has the "Monument to Feng Menglong's Birthday" inscribed by Xiang Nan, former secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee.
Dai Qingting (profile picture)
Shouning Mountain is high and cold, ripe every year, and grain production is low. "When there is a drought and a drought in the future, it is difficult to transport it abroad, and it is waiting to be killed immediately", "The poor people are still frowning, selling new grain in May", "Bring green rice and early rice, and weep white and orphaned grandchildren". The suffering of the people made him heartbroken! He went deep into the fields to guide farmers on how to breed, plow, control water, and apply fertilizer, and wrote a "practical manual" for implementation. He consulted the old records and learned that the county government had a warehouse to keep, so he learned Dai Boring's good method of storing silver and transporting grain, so that "the officials have no disturbance, and the people have the convenience of losing money", and the county warehouse "has seen the valley in the past three years", so that he can cope with disasters and famines and achieve "no hunger", and he will have the confidence.
Feng Menglong is a master of judgment. The important function of the ancient county official is to adjudicate cases. The people's evaluation of the standards of county officials mainly depends on whether the judgment of cases is fair and whether the level of judgment is high. Feng Menglongming decided the lawsuit and the government was sentenced to justice. He "did not shirk old cases and did not evade difficult problems," handled a large number of backlogged cases fairly, and the people were subservient. What is even more commendable is that he believed in and practiced Confucius Zhuzi's "no litigation" thinking, strengthened moral indoctrination, eliminated hidden dangers of civil disputes, and prevented social conflicts.
Eliminate the maladministration Feng Menglong in Shouning (Source: Wu Huaguang)
For social disputes, he adopts judicial mediation methods, such as the typical "Xixi Broken Cow Case". XJTLU is a beautiful village with rivers and fertile land. There are two villages where the villagers are not harmonious, because the land is connected, and they often quarrel and even fight over small things. This time, the herding boy herding cattle caused a fight between the two villages, causing serious consequences of "one death and one injury". The villagers on both sides argued and quarreled, and a fight was brewing.
When Feng Menglong learned of this, he rushed to the scene in time to understand the situation and mediate. He issued a 16-character message in the XJTLU official hall: "Two cows touch, one death." The dead eat together, and the living cultivate together".
Anti-riot Anliang Feng Menglong in Shouning (Source: Wu Huaguang)
This message is fair and just, down-to-earth, and harmonious, and everyone is convinced, and the two villages have lived in harmony since then. "Shouning Waiting for History" records several cases of adjudication, Feng Menglong lived for four years, and Qiankun was prosperous. The county prison "is empty at all times, and does not bother the jailers to report safety."
Shouning Waiting Zhi (Photo courtesy of Shouning County Rong Media Center)
At that time, Shouning was a poor place to live, and "although the school was set up, there were few readers. Since the establishment of the county, the imperial examination has been successful. There are few scriptures, and there are no books." After Feng Menglong arrived in office, he thought of many ways to donate money to rebuild the palace and invite teachers to educate Shouning Shizi. He reprinted the "Four Books Pointing to the Moon" written by himself and personally explained it to the scholars, hoping that they would forge ahead, read hard, and understand the true meaning of Zhuzi's "Four Books". He "set up monthly lessons" and went to the school every month to teach, so that "Shi Xinxin gradually has enterprising aspirations". The local chronicle praised him as "the first shang literature" and "courtesy when encountering scholars", which opened the good atmosphere of hundreds of years of polite learning in Shouning.
Feng Menglong insisted on turning the people into customs. He lamented the bad habit of "preferring sons over women" and "drowning if you give birth to girls" at that time, which led to an imbalance in the sex ratio in Shouning, with more men than women. In this regard, he wrote the "Notice on Forbidden Drowning Women" in easy-to-understand and clear language, moving with affection, understanding reason, and strict law. He copied dozens of copies, stamped them with the seal of the county officials, and ordered the servants to post them in villages throughout the county and publicize them. At the same time, he strictly implemented the relevant content stipulated in the "Notice on Forbidden Drowning Women", and while strictly banning, he donated money to reward the adopters, and since then the trend of drowning women has gradually subsided. At that time, the people of Shouning generally "believed in witches and did not believe in medicine, and every illness must call wizards to greet God", and many people delayed treatment, and their illnesses worsened or even died. In this regard, Feng Menglong "forbidden and donated medicine", changing the bad habits of the people.
As a local official beloved by the people, Feng Menglong had many intersections with the Great Ru Zhuzi. Shouning County is composed of Fu'an and Zhenghe each taking part of the land. Zhu Zi's father, Zhu Song, served as a county lieutenant in Zhenghe and traveled to many villages, leaving many chants. Zhu Zi's teacher Liu Zihui also chanted the poems of the Sanfeng Temple. Zhu Zi provided disaster relief in Chong'an that year, and was the first to establish a social warehouse and promote it throughout the country. Shouning's predecessor Zhixian Dai followed suit and established five social warehouses such as Nanxi and Pingxi, and Feng Menglong restored and used the social warehouses.
Like Zhu Zi, what Feng Menglong sees and thinks is the fireworks of the common people. Due to the steep road of Shouning Mountain, farmers have a hard time picking grain. The Feng County decree stipulates that grain households can pay the grain to the nearest social warehouse; When relief is distributed during the drought year, villagers receive rice and rice from the nearest social warehouse to reduce the burden on farmers.
Of course, Feng Menglong and Zhu Zi are more important in the intersection of ideas and the concept of serving the people, and their concepts of non-litigation, persuasion to farmers and students, and examples of honesty are very similar. The two have similar political styles, and they are very persistent in everything that harms the people of the country, whether it is within their own authority or not. Feng Menglong deeply studied Zhu Zi's works, and his books such as "Four Books Referring to the Moon" not only accurately explained Zhu Zi's original meaning, but also advanced with the times, reflecting the popularity of the times, and more suitable for the general public.
Feng Menglong of Shouning is not only a good official and a Qing official, but also a generation of literary heroes. Despite his age, he traveled all over the county, carefully observing the characteristics of folk customs such as folk farming, pig raising, farmhouses, and even marriage and funerals. He humbly sought advice from the people, put himself into practice, felt the "poverty of Shouyi" and "the hardship of the people", and remembered all kinds of shortcomings of the times. In the last year of Shouning, Feng Menglong compiled and completed the unique "Shouning Waiting Zhi" with more than 50,000 words. It records the real social situation in the late Ming Dynasty, and a large number of pages in the book are records of Feng Menglong's thoughts during his birthday, which is very precious!
Feng Menglong served in Shouning for four years, where he alleviated conscription, reformed the rule of officials, clearly adjudicated lawsuits, eliminated malpractices, rectified the style of study, and promoted benefits and eliminated harms, creating a Shouning where the people lived and worked in peace and contentment. Late Ming scholars commented on his "Fifty-seven Orders in Ji Minzhong, Mr. Wuyu", and praised Feng Menglong's reign for Shouning's "Night and Moon Songs in the Farmland, and Jian Shu Chunyun in the Public Court".
Feng Menglong was full of articles, thousands of miles of eunuchs, two sleeves of fresh breeze, full of scrolls, went to the countryside during the day to investigate or promote the church to do things for the people, and came to read and write under the lamp at night, setting up a spiritual benchmark for good officials and clean officials. Four years of Shouning's achievements in government, is Mr. alone an article?
"Yu Shi Mingyan", "Cautionary Tongyan" and "Awakening Hengyan", collectively known as "Three Words", is a collection of three short stories compiled by Feng Menglong on the basis of extensive collection of words and onomatopoeia books during the five hundred years of the three dynasties of Song, Yuan, and Ming, and compiled by him. (Profile picture)
Statue of Feng Menglong on the top of the South Mountain of Shouning. (Photo courtesy of Shouning County Rong Media Center)
Shouning South Mountain is a famous scenic spot in Shouning, where green mountains are like dai, green water flows for a long time, green and lush, birds and flowers.
On the top of the majestic South Mountain, stands the statue of Feng Menglong. Despite the erosion of wind and rain, the wind and bones of a generation of great literary heroes and a generation of Qing officials and good county officials are still there. His long beard flutters, white clouds on his sleeves, looking into the distance, witnessing that the former Shouning County is becoming a beautiful and happy new mountain city under the sun and rain!
Shouning Xianfengling (Source: Min Dong Express)