In the second year of Emperor Suzong of Tang 's reign (759), the Huazhang of the Tang Dynasty was already yesterday's yellow flower, replaced by the devastated rivers and mountains and displaced people after An shi's poisoning.
At that time, Du Fu was in the temple of black smoke and miasma, and his heart was sad and cold, was this still the Ming Dynasty that he was willing to risk his life and run thousands of miles? Unwilling to bend his waist for five buckets of rice, he finally chose to abandon the official and take his family from Ganlong to Shudi, until he stopped on the banks of Huanhua Creek in Chengdu.
From the second year of Emperor Suzong of Tang (759) to the first year of Emperor Yongtai of the Tang Dynasty (765), Du Fu had been living in Shudi, and although his life was difficult, it was always difficult to change the background of his life of worrying about the country and the people, and he was still using his pen as a knife and writing history with poetry, and issued one small but great cry after another against the increasingly dim Tang sky.
Even after a long time, great souls will eventually meet. When Du Fu found that his voice could not reach the ears of those in power at all, his heart was instantly enveloped by unprecedented loneliness, and this loneliness of being the only person in the vast world reminded Du Fu of a person named Chen Ziang, a poet who had died 57 years ago.
For every reader who has written poetry, Chen Ziang is an immortal myth, and in every lonely wandering, difficult to express the chest in the night, they only need to chant a sentence "Read the heavens and the earth slowly, alone but weeping", the anger in their hearts can always be dispelled.
So Du Fu, who was worried about the country and the people, tirelessly came to Chen Ziang's former residence in Sichuan, and then left a poem there, "Chen Shi's Former Residence", which contains such a sentence: After the public birth and the horse, the name hangs with the sun and the moon. I believe that Chen Ziang under the Nine Springs will feel enough comfort after hearing this sentence, because after going to Huangquan, there are still people who can recall their former selves and affirm their short life of hardship and hatred but determined to serve the country.
This great poet, who had twice joined the army and was repeatedly excluded, wrote in 22 words in the darkest days of his life that the loneliness of the ancient and modern times was shocked, and at the age of 41, he was wrongfully imprisoned for offending the powerful and finally being unjustly imprisoned for the crime of weaving.
Before his death, Chen Ziang was a pure minister of the Tang Dynasty who was not afraid of power and dared to be the first in the world; behind him, Chen Ziang was the backbone of the poetry world that boosted the poetic style and opened the brilliant poetry of Tang poetry. I would rather have no ancients before and no one after, and a person must also live to become the peerless bone of the Tang Dynasty poetry.
"Du Fu Chen Ziang is the name of heaven and earth." What Du Fu did not know was that in the decades after his death, Bai Juyi, the leader of the Zhongtang poetry circle, would have the wisdom to compare him with the idol Chen Ziang.
Today, Du Fu, like Li Bai, has become the spokesman of Tang poetry, but like Du Fu, who is arrogant and arrogant like Li Bai, when mentioning Chen Ziang, he also has to sigh: "Lin and Feng." "Such a popular figure has been annihilated in the smoke and dust of history, and few people have mentioned it again."
Unlike most poets who grew up with a strong understanding, Chen Ziang was a person with a very distinct role change, a young man born in a hugely wealthy family in Shehong County, Zizhou (now Shehong City, Sichuan), who spent a fairly happy childhood under the shadow of his father.
In the third year after Chen Ziang's birth, in the first year of Emperor Gaozong's reign (664), a bloody political purge was brewing in the Tang Dynasty, which was in the midst of peace and prosperity.
At this time, the Tang Empire no longer belonged exclusively to the Li family, and a powerful woman named Wu Zetian used her own strategies and means to force her husband Gaozong Li Zhijie to retreat, and Li Zhi, who originally wanted to edict The Chancellor Shangguan Yi to draft the edict of the abolition, was soft-hearted for a while because of his old feelings, so that Wu Zetian could turn defeat into victory, thus laying the pattern of the Tang Dynasty's Second Holy Dynasty.
Since then, Emperor Gaozong has hung behind every matter and the empress dowager, and the government is no big or small, and all are related to it, "the power of the world is returned to the middle palace", and the son of heaven is only handed over, which is called the second saint at home and abroad.
Li Tang's silent transition to the era of Wu Zetian did not seem so important to The people of the world, and Chen Ziang, who was still a child at the time, would not have thought that the glory of his future life was opened by Wu Zetian, and his tragic end was indirectly caused by Wu Zetian.
The Tang Dynasty poet Lu Zang wrote in the "Biography of Chen Zi'ang": "Zi Zi Ang, Qi Jie is outstanding, and the posture is Yue Li." It began with the Hao family's chi chi qi, to the seventeenth and eighteenth year unknown book. When he was young, Chen Ziang interpreted that sentence very well with his own words and deeds: Money can really do whatever he wants, most of his time is in horse fighting, and he often relies on a passion to fight unevenness, and unlike other children who are bent on reading and preparing for scientific examinations, Chen Ziang has a million family wealth to inherit.
However, under the strict hierarchy of the ancient "scholars, farmers, industrialists and merchants", the Chen family on the rich side still hoped to cultivate a reader who could enter the army, and at this time, Chen Ziang, who had been smooth sailing all the way, also faced the first setback in his life.
And it was this incident that allowed Chen Ziang, who had been drunk and dreaming of death, to calm down for the first time and think about his life in the past nearly twenty years. At that time, the Tang Dynasty had already begun to flourish in the Tang Dynasty, and the people born under such a vast empire all wanted to make contributions to the country and were eager to leave their names in this great history.
When everyone around him was reading the sage books like chicken blood, only for Chang'an to rush to a high school, Chen Ziang, who had never been interested in reading the imperial examination, finally abandoned his sword and put away the heart that wanted to be a ranger, and like most of the young people in the Tang Dynasty, he also embarked on the road of preparing for the examination.
Xu Song, a great Confucian of the Qing Dynasty, had such a record in the "Dengke Jikao": In the final Tang Dynasty, gongju jinshifan was 266 times, and the number of jinshi was 6642, in other words, the average number of jinshi and the first jinshi was less than 25.
In the "New Book of Tang and Electoral History", he also left a sentence by Tang Wenzong Li Ang: Thirty people who have ascended to the throne in the years, there are no ones, and there is no need for them. It is precisely because of the principle of electing soldiers rather than indiscriminately by those in power that the admission rate of the Tang Dynasty is at the bottom of the dynasties.
Reading is a child's skill, countless students who have studied the way of the sages since childhood have not yet achieved anything in the white head, such as Chen Ziang, who only intends to learn from scratch at the age of seventeen or eighteen, in the eyes of outsiders, it is just a whim of the stupid children.
But soon these people found that the young master Chen who was drinking and having fun in the streets and alleys of Shehong County every day was gone, and for two or three years, Chen Ziang was swimming in the sea of books and literature like an old monk.
Chen Ziang only took three years to read through the poetry classics that others could only read through, and it was in this short period of 3 years that he transformed from a blind man into a scholar with a full belly. Just like being suddenly opened up to the second pulse of Ren Dou, Chen Ziang's articles are timeless and long, and many people who have read his articles have sighed, and there are similar wind bones between the lines of Yang Xiong and Sima Xiang.
Try to learn from the beginning of the village, and be determined to be determined, because he refused to be a doorman, he specialized in the tomb canon. In a few years, through the history of hundreds of families, it should not be read, especially good at literature, ya has similar, Ziyun wind bone. - "The Biography of Chen Ziang"
However, talent alone is far from enough to be on the list, every corner of the Tang Dynasty created by the Guan Long Group is firmly occupied by the door valve forces, as a green channel for naturally promoting their own people, there will never be a situation in the Datang scientific expedition where an unknown person can also be famous.
This is a well-known secret, and it is also the rule of the game formulated by the tang dynasty magnates, and if you want to be famous, talent and reputation are indispensable. After all, Sichuan Shu was far away from the mountains and rivers, and even if the Chen family, who was hugely rich in the local area, threw it into a pile of magnates like Chang'an, they couldn't even splash a splash.
Chen Ziang, who already had enough talent, finally officially left Sichuan in the first year of Emperor Gaozong's reign (679), and in order to make a face familiar, he entered the Chang'an Guozijian to study, and participated in the imperial examination the following year, and then unexpectedly fell off the list. This defeat was not over, because two years later, in the first year of Yongchun (682), the 21-year-old Chen Ziang received the second defeat of the imperial examination.
Don't laugh at Chen Ziang even failed the exam twice, if you compare the other two people, you will find that the failure of the 21-year-old Chen Ziang keju is a reasonable thing. The great poet Bai Juyi entered the shi and the first at the age of 27, and after his ecstasy, he climbed the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and wrote the sentence: The inscription under the Ci'en Pagoda is the youngest of the seventeen people; and although Han Yu of The Hundred Dynasties Wenzong entered the shi and the first at the age of 24, he took the exam three times before that and lost three times.
Talent without reputation is like wine hidden in the cellar, Wu Zetian civilization in the first year (684) dust servants rushed to Chang'an Chen Ziang to prepare for the third time to participate in the scientific expedition, two failures have made him deeply aware of the crux of the matter, if there is no way to let the magnates of Chang'an City remember themselves, even if it is thirty times to no avail.
At this moment, a vendor selling Huqin on the streets of Chang'an attracted chen Ziang's attention, and the vendor asked for millions of dollars, which attracted countless heroes and magnates to watch for a while, but none of them dared to answer.
And Chen Ziang, who has been suffering from no one knowing, instantly thought of a way to improve his popularity, and this young master who was not bad for money bought the Huqin without blinking an eye, and the next day he spent a lot of money to charter the luxurious restaurant in Xuanyang, Chang'an, and feasted on the Haojie Xun nobles who were present yesterday to drink and appreciate the piano.
When everyone was full of wine and food, Chen Ziang fuqin sighed: Chen Ziang, a Shu person, has a hundred axes of literature, and is not known, and it is advisable to pay attention to the joy of this pleasure of lowly work. As soon as the words fell, the million-dollar Huqin was destroyed by Chen Ziang on the spot, and while everyone present was stunned, Chen Ziang distributed the poems he had written in the past to everyone present. Although Chen Ziang's wave of marketing costs are huge, the reputation gained is far beyond imagination, and the front page headlines of Chang'an City on that day belong to this unknown person from Sichuan - Chen Ziang.
When Cai Qi met a big enough reputation, Chen Ziang's fame on the list became a natural thing. So in the early years of Wu Zetian's civilization (684), the 23-year-old Chen Ziang finally entered the army and stepped into the Tang Dynasty officialdom of his dreams with half a foot.
In the Tang Dynasty, all the officials must be dragons and phoenixes among the people, in addition to the super perverted jinshi report ratio, even after painstakingly being admitted to the jinshi, it is only to enter the talent pool of tang civil servants.
After the scientific examination, there were also a series of more professional and more difficult selection examinations waiting for the Candidates of the Tang Dynasty, such as: the Erudite Hongzi Section, which made Han Yu lose four times in a row, the Official QuanXuan Examination that made Zhang Ji fall behind, and the Yousu Branch for Special Talents, the Disciple Ju, and so on.
But what everyone did not expect was that the maverick Chen Ziang bypassed all the examinations and broke into the official field of datang in another way that others did not dare to think.
Just like Chen Ziang's self-monologue in his work "The Book of Counseling and Reasoning": Every time a subject is in the valley, there is a wish for the imperial court, and he is often afraid that he will not be able to see it without a substitute. From the moment he put away his heart and decided to study and enter the army, Chen Ziang was ready to be "lonely and straight", and he did not want to serve the country all the time, lest he be lost to everyone.
For Chen Ziang, being an official is not to seek wealth, if it is only for the sake of wealth, why should he go out of Sichuan? What he wanted to do was Wei Zheng, a direct courtier who could not be afraid to die and advise the king of his mistakes. And when the official's heart was loaded with cangsheng, in the eyes of the people who were flying in the Tang Dynasty officialdom at that time, the corpse was vegetarian, he was an outlier who broke the rules of the game.
When Chen Ziang decided to do the second Wei Zheng, he had already laid the groundwork for his dismal official path and tragic life.
In the first year of Emperor Gaozong's reign (683), The Tang lost a moderate emperor, and with the fall of Emperor Gaozong of Tang's reign, the era belonging to Wu Zetian officially arrived. Li Zhi collapsed in Luoyang, and whether to transport the body back to the imperial capital Chang'an became the focus of the Manchu Dynasty's wenwu debate.
Just as Wu Zetian was looking at the mushy Wenwu Hundred Officials in the hall, an article titled "The Book of The Spirit Driving into Beijing" came into her eyes, Wu Zetian rarely praised people, and the last person who was praised by her was Luo Bin wang of the early Tang Dynasty. When Wu Zetian finished reading the Book of "The Book of The Spirit Of Persuasion into Beijing", he was immediately attracted by the unbridled style of writing and the skill of quoting scriptures, and chen Ziang's three words appeared in her mouth for the first time.
At that time, Chen Ziang was just a meritorious but non-official jinshi, and when he heard that Wu Zetian was going to summon him personally, those Wen Tao martial arts that had been painstakingly read for several years and hidden in his heart were all released in an instant. In the face of questions from the highest ruler of the Tang Empire, Chen Ziang, who was weak in stature, talked about the harmony between kings and subjects from the foundation of the country and the division of the territory, and the generosity between the words made Wu Zetian, who was determined to kill, moved.
Zi Ang looked like a widow, but he said that the king was hegemonic and generous when he was a monarch. - "The Biography of Chen Ziang"
This meeting allowed Chen Ziang to get a minor official under the Zhengjiu Pin, Lintai Zhengzi, whose daily duty was to correct the text, but this meeting was far more meaningful to Chen Ziang than that.
In the Aristocratic Tang Dynasty, such a non-family disciple as himself was actually summoned and recognized by the supreme ruler, Chen Ziang's heart must be grateful to Wu Zetian, and the loyal subjects must meet the Ming Lord, Chen Ziang must have thought of the combination of Li Shimin and Wei Zheng decades ago, and from that moment on, he decided to repay the favor of the king.
But Chen Ziang was wrong, very wrong.
What Chen Ziang was looking forward to was the harmony of Li Shimin's Wei Zheng-style monarchs and subjects, but he forgot that there was only one Li Shimin in these thousands of generations and the kingdoms of the four seas, and the king he was loyal to was Wu Zetian, a male lord who spoiled the cool officials, made good use of heavy codes, and suppressed all sides.
For Wu Zetian, the temple is like a pot of stew, she is the chef in charge of cooking, she needs both a cool official like Junchen to consolidate her rule, and a ruler like Di Renjie to assist herself, and a lonely and pure minister like Chen Ziang is just a symbol, a political pawn that symbolizes Wu Zetian's obedience to the flow and tolerance.
Chen Ziang's greatest sorrow is also here, when he found that his generous statement did not receive any response from the king, when he found that his full ambition could only pass with the years, Chen Ziang felt his first frustration after entering the army.
In later generations, some people once joined the persuasion team because Chen Ziang wrote a "Ode to the Appointment of the Great Zhou Dynasty" before Wu Zetian became emperor, and criticized Chen Ziang as a person who flattered Wu Zetian, but from Chen Ziang's various performances, it can be seen that where is Chen Ziang flattering Wu Zetian? It was only because the Tang Dynasty at that time needed a male lord, and the people at that time needed a Ming Emperor.
Chen Ziang could not be a courtesan, and his allegiance was never Wu Zetian, and his allegiance had always been to the people of the Tang Dynasty.
Chen Ziang's gaze was always precise and vicious, and he advised Wu Zetian to administer benevolent government, abolish the severe punishment law, severely punish the cruel officials, stop persecuting Li Tangzong's office, and abolish the whistle-blowing system in which everyone endangered themselves.
Gradually, Chen Ziang's recital was no longer replied to, he was like a poor worm who had been forgotten in the corner of the temple, even if he shouted with exhaustion, the response to him was only death-like silence. In the past few years, the friends around him have all ascended smoothly, and Chen Ziang has struggled to rise from the Lintai Zhengzi under the Zhengjiu Pin to the Right Picker from the Eight Pins.
For Chen Ziang, it is not a small matter to not be promoted, but being ignored by the king makes it difficult for him to hide his sadness, he tells it over and over again in his poems, but he always refuses to become inflammatory and follows the tide.
If you can't serve the country above the temple, then go to war with the army and quell the rebellion for the country. Chen Ziang was unwilling to submit to the powerful people in the DPRK, and after several unsuccessful attempts to serve the country, he took the initiative to ask Miao to join the army, and with his weak body, he successively marched from the northwest to attack the Khitans.
There are many poets of the Tang Dynasty who express their desire to make contributions to the country and aspire to join the army, but few can really reach the front line and experience the battlefield fighting. Chen Ziang, who has always appeared in the long river of history as a weak body, has joined the army twice, supporting him to overcome the difficulties of the border pass, without his ears, only a heart of blood.
But the naïve Chen Ziang was still wrong, he forgot the phrase "everything in Kyushu is like this", at this time Li Tang jiangshan had become a wuzhou world, Wu Zetian's nephews firmly held the country's military and political power, such as Chen Ziang such a qingliu direct minister and a martial family disciple such a clumsy prince, destined to be a natural enemy.
In the first year of Wu Zetian's long life (696), Chen Ziang accompanied the Jian'an king Wu Youyi from the Khitan conquest, the great warplane was fleeting, and the impatient Chen Ziang put forward a rather elaborate battle plan, and regardless of his physical weakness, put forward a request to "beg for tens of thousands of people to think that they were the precursor", but they were all rejected by Wu Youyi on the grounds that Chen Ziang was "a literati and did not understand the military".
Jian'an Fang asked for a fighter, and Zi Ang Su was a scholar, and Xie was not na. Zi Ang was weak and sick, grateful for his loyalty, and tried to fight to answer the country.' Thinking that the official is in the close service, and participating in the military conspiracy, he does not see the danger and spares his body. - "The Biography of Chen Ziang"
The yellow sand was rolling, the ma ge was wrapped in corpses, and Wu Youyi's gangyi was exchanged for a defeat, and Chen Ziang, who was full of grief and indignation, revisited his hometown, climbed the Jibei Building, looked at the yellow sand that covered the sky, and sighed the eternal loneliness that belonged only to him Chen Ziang: he did not see the ancients before, and those who did not see the comers after him, read the leisure of heaven and earth, and drooled alone.
From this moment on, Chen Ziang's heart was completely dead.
In the first year of Wu Zetian's holy calendar (698), the disheartened Chen Ziang resigned from his official post and returned to his hometown on the grounds that his father was sick and sick, and received preferential treatment from Wu Zetian to retain his official position and Feng Lu.
It's like the poem "Answer to the Guests of Luoyang" that he wrote before he left the river: otherwise he will whisk away his clothes and return to the sea gulls. Ning follows the contemporaries, leaning sideways and sinking. If the ambition in your chest is difficult to exert, it is better to whisk your sleeves away and be a lone gull on the sea, free.
Like the 19-year-old Chen Ziang who had just left Sichuan in the first year of Emperor Gaozong's reign (679), after nineteen years of eunuchs floating and sinking, after a lot of deceit, the 39-year-old Chen Ziang never changed his original intention, and this time he fulfilled the oath he took 20 years ago.
Chen Ziang, who returned to his hometown, made a vision for the rest of his life, and he decided to let go of all the ties, build a house in the mountains and forests of his hometown shehong County, and spend all his time writing books and sayings, since he could not change the world, he would let the torch be passed on and hand over his ideas and propositions to future generations.
But Chen Ziang forgot one thing, political persecution has always been endless, and when Chen Ziang chose to leave, there was a pair of eyes in Chang'an City staring at his fading back.
In the third year after Chen Ziang returned to his hometown, at the behest of the powerful minister Wu Sansi, Shehong County ordered Luo Weaving to be imprisoned, and Chen Ziang, who was physically weak, was humiliated in prison in every way, and although his family rescued him in many ways, he was ultimately humiliated and died unjustly in prison at the age of 41.
When Chen Ziang died, the music of the Sheng Tang was about to sound the prelude, and the brilliant moments of the Tang Poetry Circle had gradually revealed their outlines, and at this time, the four masters of the Chu Tang Dynasty had all passed away, such as Li Du and others had not yet had time to step onto the stage of history, Chen Ziang was like a bridge between the Chu Tang And the Sheng Tang, using his own strength to promote the reform of the poetry culture, and completed the transformation of the Tang poetry in later generations from the obsessive qi liang decadent to the pursuit of elegance.
Even in the "New Book of Tang , The Biography of Chen Ziang " , there are words of praise : Tang Xing , the article inherits the wind of Xu Yu , the world is still ancestor , Zi Ang began to become elegant. But what does all this have to do with Chen Ziang? He had become accustomed to being lonely and not being understood, and such a figure did not need the approval of others to prove his worth.
Chen Ziang walked so lonely, from the temple to the far plug, from the far plug to the rivers and lakes, and then to the long river of history, sighing: I did not see the ancients before, and I did not see the comers after me.