On September 20 of the year of Jia Shu, qin Yushan people were widowed by the widow Hua Shi, who was in danger.
This is the masterpiece of Xu Fang, a relict of the early Qing Dynasty and the late Ming Dynasty.
The year of Jia Shu in the text refers to the thirty-third year of the Qing Kangxi Dynasty, that is, the year 1694 AD. At this time, 50 years had passed since the Chongzhen Emperor had hanged himself in 1644, 32 years had passed since the yongli Emperor was killed in 1662, and 11 years had passed since the demise of Ming Zheng, the last regime of the Ming Dynasty, in 1683.
The Qizhai and Qinyushan people in the text are Xu Fang's numbers, which are the self-titles of ancient Chinese people in addition to names and characters.
At the time of writing, Xu Fang was 73 years old, his family relatives had died out, only his daughter-in-law Hua Shi and his grandson Xu Xiaguan, who was only four years old, accompanied him, and after Xu Fang's death, Hua And Xu Xiaguan also died one after another, and Xu Fang's direct blood line was severed.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > national change</h1>
Xu Fang himself was born into a bureaucratic family in the Ming Dynasty, the Xu family has been acting as an official since the sixth ancestor, Xu Fang's father Xu Fengjinshi was born, changed to Shu Jishi, and was promoted to Right Shuzi of Right Chunfang. In the Ming Dynasty, this was a seniority that could enter the cabinet, and he also participated in the political struggle for the restoration of the society. After the establishment of the Southern Ming Dynasty, Xu Huan was appointed as a junior Zhan Shi of Zhan Shi Fu and a bachelor of Hanlin Academy.
Due to the superior family environment, Xu Fang has been friends with Jiangnan shi celebrities since childhood, many of whom are celebrities of the Fu Society, such as Zheng Shijiao, Chen Zilong, Zhu Jihuan, Yang Tingshu and others, who are Xu Feng's friends and Xu Fang's elders and teachers. The academic environment in Jiangnan also made Xu Fang grow rapidly, and in the fifteenth year of Chongzhen (1642), the 21-year-old Xu Fang was already in the township examination, and it can be said that a great future is in front of him.
However, at this time, the Ming Dynasty had already entered a dead end, and natural disasters and man-made disasters in the north made a large number of peasants on the road to overthrowing the rule of the Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng had developed and grown in 1642, and the Manchu Qing outside Guanwai coveted the Central Plains. In 1644, Li Zicheng invaded Beijing, the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself, and then the Qing army entered the pass at the invitation of Wu Sangui to defeat Li Zicheng and seize Beijing, and in the same year the Hongguang regime in Nanjing was established. In 1645, after the Qing army moved south and Nanjing, the capital of the Hongguang regime, was captured by the Qing army, Suzhou and Changzhou fell one after another.
This was a double blow to Xu Huan, a high-ranking ming official. In 1644, Chongzhen hanged himself, many famous and self-motivated officials had committed suicide and martyrdom, Xu Feng did not choose suicide but joined the Hongguang regime, naturally hoping that the country would be prosperous. However, in 1645, the Hongguang regime was defeated, and the Ming dynasty regime collapsed again. As a high-ranking bureaucrat, Xu Feng could not serve the country to save the country, but instead saw the country perish, and naturally felt pain, coupled with his own Confucian idea of honor and festival, under the background of the destruction of the country and the death of the family, Xu Feng chose to commit suicide by throwing water into the Water at the Xintang Bridge in Suzhou on June 12, and martyrdom for the Ming Dynasty.
Fan Shifu's "Peng old ruler" records the situation when Xu Huan committed suicide, which was a Confucian believer who sacrificed his life for his faith and a high-ranking official who sacrificed himself for the destruction of the country:
Don't be the emperor of Taishi, who has changed his mind, has no desire to live, and avoids the long swing of the Tiger Hill. A flood of autumn water, wandering day and night. On the twelfth day of June, there was an order to shave his hair, and there was no word. It is the evening moon as bright as day, with wine to treat all the followers, leaning on the side of the ship, sitting alone on the moon, suddenly jumping into the water, people can not save. ”
According to the custom of the time, many officials would commit suicide with their families, but Xu Did not do so, perhaps because he pitied his 24-year-old son. At that time, Xu Fang was still ill, and when he heard the bad news, he once wanted to follow his father to commit suicide by throwing himself into the water, but Xu Feng left Xu Fang before his death:
"I can't not die, if I grow up to be a farmer and have no regrets"
This will said three points: Xu Feng's suicide was his choice, but he wanted his son Xu Fang to live, and at the same time let Xu Fang choose to live as a farmer for a lifetime.
Many people may not understand that in their opinion, is it not good to be a farmer? In fact, there is no understanding of Xu Feng's true meaning. At this time, Xu Fang was already a person, and the Xu family was also a family of scholars in Jiangnan, which was exactly what the Rulers of the Qing Dynasty needed to win over. It should be known that in the early years of the Qing Dynasty, due to the lack of officials, there was a great need for talents, and even sent people to forcibly detain the reclusive Ming Dynasty scholars as officials, Xu Fang himself could be recruited by the Qing Dynasty as an official, and for the Manchu Qing to serve to win over the scholars in Jiangnan. Xu Fan did not want his son to serve the Manchu Qing, so he asked Xu Fang to be a farmer and isolate himself from the Manchu Regime.
But for Xu Fang, this is another kind of suffering. Because the scholar family under the imperial examination system is not engaged in agricultural production, the scholar is a foster intellectual of the state, by serving the state as an official to take the Feng Lu to survive, itself has no survival skills, Xu Fang as a scholar, the first half of his life is through reading to take the examination to become an official as a career, he himself will not farm, Xu Fang is not an official, which means that his life will be poor and difficult after that, but how to be a farmer will be Xu Fang's goal to be achieved in the next fifty years.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the failure of the father's resistance to the Qing</h1>
Shortly before Xu Feng's death, the Manchu Qing issued a shaving order, which is generally known to everyone, that is, shaving the hair into a money rattail. Shaving your hair is commonplace in modern society, but it was a big deal in ancient times. Many people like to use Han Customs to illustrate the arbitrariness of the Manchu rulers, but in reality this is only one of the reasons.
The more profound reason is that although the Han people as a developed civilization were defeated militarily by the Manchu Qing, they still regarded themselves as civilized and superior peoples in the scope of self-perception, and regarded the Manchu rulers represented by the Shunzhi Emperor and Dorgon as a savage tribe outside guanwai, so in the eyes of the Han people, the living habits of the Han people themselves were naturally a way of civilized life. The Shunzhi Emperor and Dorgon were very aware of the psychological state of the Han people, so they forcibly implemented the shaving order, making the money rattail a symbol of the conqueror, eliminating the self-esteem of the Han people, and letting every Han person see his hair know that he was a slave to the country, and this symbolic sense of humiliation naturally aroused the resistance of the Han people. So there were eighty-one days in Jiangyin, three massacres in Jiading, and so on.
And Xu Fang's elders died in this anti-Qing uprising:
Yang Tingshu, who was friends with Xu Fang's father Xu Feng, was also Xu Fang's fellow villager. From 1645 onwards, Yang Tingshu threw himself into the anti-Qing struggle, because he was leaked information, he continued to fight after hiding outside, after which the local gentry fled, Yang Tingshu stayed behind to raise grain for the anti-Qing rebels, and in 1647 participated in the Qing Dynasty's viceroy Wu Shengzhao's anti-Qing campaign in Songjiang Province, Wu Shengzhao was killed because of the defeat, and Yang Tingshu was arrested and killed by the Qing army. He was buried by his protégés after his death.
Chen Zilong, who is also an elder, has forgotten his friendship. Chen Zilong organized many rebels to hold anti-Qing uprisings after the fall of the Hongguang regime, and insisted on not shaving his hair, in 1647 Chen Zilong participated in the Wu Shengzhao uprising, after which he was captured by the Qing army, and then escorted to Nanjing, Chen Zilong committed suicide by diving, and the Qing army also brutally beheaded him and abandoned his body in the water. Chen Zilong's protégé Wang Hu and his carman Wu Youyou found his body in Maozhu Port and buried it in a coffin.
Zhu Jihuang, a mentor who failed to participate in the defense of the city against the Qing army moving south in Kunshan County, committed suicide by throwing himself into the water. The Ming Dynasty Records that Zhu Jihuan was arrested and killed by the Qing army.
Xu Fang himself also suffered the humiliation of shaving his hair, about four months after his father's death, when xu Fang hid in Songling in order to avoid shaving his hair, he was arrested by the Qing army, and Xu Fang refused to kneel in the lobby, and as a result, the Qing army cut his hair. For the scholar Xu Fang, it was nothing less than a great shame, many scholars could not stand this humiliation and committed suicide, but at that time Xu Fang chose to live, because he remembered his father's last will: to live.
On the other hand, the anti-Qing spirit of his father also inspired the young Xu Fang, who also threw himself into the anti-Qing struggle after that, and he also participated in the linkage of the remnants of the Ming Dynasty, trying to secretly hold anti-Qing actions, on the one hand, moving around, although there were other reasons for life here, there were also secret contacts between the reasons for anti-Qing and restoration at that time.
From 1646 to 1648, Xu Fang lived in front of the tomb of his father Xu Feng and named it "Juyi Hall".
In 1659, he went to Jicuishan Temple
In 1660, he went to Deng Wei Mountain
In 1661, he came to Liangxi Changtai Mountain
In 1662, with the help of Hirochu, the abbot of Lingyan Temple, he settled in the sand village of Tianping Mountain
While the Hongchu monks supported the anti-Qing and restoration of the Ming Dynasty, Xu Fang, as Hongchu's "cloth disciple", secretly contacted the Ming remnants, and a large number of Ming remnants held rallies at that time. Moreover, Xu Fang had close ties with his brother-in-law Wu Zuxi, who had served yongli and Lu Jianguo, and also worked under Zheng Chenggong and Zhang Huangyan, and Xu Fang and Wu Zuxi were obviously in contact with the Qing Dynasty to restore the Ming Dynasty. However, the anti-Qing and restoration behavior gradually dissipated due to the stable rule of the Qing Dynasty, so being a relic became Xu Fang's choice.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the pain of being alive</h1>
When Xu Fang was a relict, the predicament came from the poverty of life. Xu Fang's family itself, because it is a scholar family, generally has land property, the Xu family also has six acres of land, but it is shared by the family, Xu Fang's family can get some land rent from the six acres of land property owned by the Xu family collectively. However, in 1661, in order to subdue jiangnan's resistance to the Qing Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor ordered Tian Fu in Jiangnan to pay all the tax evasion for ten years, which led to cases such as song sales and weeping temples, xu fang because he was the head of the Xu family, so he took full responsibility and chose to flee, and eventually Xu Fang lost all his source of livelihood.
After the remnants of the Ming Dynasty lost their source of livelihood, they each developed their own means of livelihood, Huang Zongxi ran a college to teach, Chaoming Sheng seeds were made into small boxes for sale, Xu Fang could not farm, and the means of maintaining subsistence was to sell paintings, but he did not sign his paintings, because he did not expect to get rich in this way, but only sold paintings when forced to do so.
In fact, Xu Fang's reputation as a relic in Jiangnan after the Kangxi Dynasty is very heavy, many people admire his temperament and thus raise money to buy Xu Fang's paintings, and there are also many rich people who want to buy Xu Fang's signed calligraphy and paintings to show their identity, so it is very easy for Xu Fang to maintain food and clothing by selling paintings. However, he did not choose to survive as a painter, and only when xu Fang was forced to sell his paintings to survive, after all, he had always obeyed his will to live. The poverty of life led to the death of Xu Fang's family, and Xu Fang's four sons died of physical injuries due to malnutrition and long-term starvation. The only daughter died at the age of 3 due to a cold illness that lacked warm clothes in winter.
Xu Fang himself is also constantly infected:
On the ninth day of November 1657, Xu Fang suddenly fell seriously ill, vomited and could not eat, so that he did not have a bowel movement in December, and in the first month of the first month, Xu Fang once thought that his life was short, wanted to make a will, and finally lived under the treatment of doctors, but Xu Fang had two sideburns due to physical damage.
In 1671, Xu Fang suffered from blood diarrhea and suffered from illness for two months before gradually recovering.
In August 1673, Xu Fang fell seriously ill, and he was so sick that he needed the help of his family to turn over his body. During this period, his brother-in-law Wu Zuxi finally fell seriously ill and did not recover until the end of September.
In 1675, he fell ill while giving a message to another Ming Dynasty remnant, Shen Shoumin, who also belonged to the "Three Relics of Hainei", and finally recovered.
In fact, Xu Fang wants to be prosperous and rich is also very simple, the Qing Dynasty for the Ming Dynasty remnants of the recruitment did not stop, especially the self-proclaimed "since ancient times the world is as good as my dynasty", Kangxi once wantonly recruited the remnants of the Ming Dynasty, in the ninth year of Kangxi (1670), the twelfth year (1673), thirteen years (1674) has included the remnants of the people, but most of the Ming Dynasty remnants still do not cooperate with the Qing Dynasty, and finally Kangxi in the seventeenth year of Kangxi (1678) to develop erudite Hongru, but still only more than 100 people participated, In the forty-second year of Kangxi (1703), Kangxi went to Xi'an to see Li Yong, a remnant of the Ming Dynasty, but Li Yong only asked his son to bring two books written by himself to Kangxi and resigned.
As Confucian officials of the Qing Dynasty, on the one hand, they recruited the remnants of the Ming Dynasty in place of Kangxi, and on the other hand, as Confucian scholars, they also wanted to meet these dignified people. As the "Three Remnants of The Sea", many Qing Dynasty officials admired Xu Fang and wanted to help Xu Fang or mu ming to meet him.
Cai Yurong, the governor of Chuanhu Lake, wanted to help Xu Fang, but did not dare to help directly, so he entrusted someone to send medicinal materials, but Xu Fang refused to accept it.
Tang Bin, a famous scholar of the Kangxi Dynasty, served as the governor of Jiangsu, and Tang Bin admired Xu Fang very much, and went to The Sha Village on Tianping Mountain several times, just to meet Xu Fang, and also took the form of a commoner to meet, but Xu Fang still refused to meet.
Song Jie, the governor of Jiangsu, admired Xu Fang as a person, and after Xu Fang's death, he wanted to pay a lot of money to support Xu Fang's family, but was still rejected by Hua's mother and son.
As a relict, Xu Fang struggled with the world by relying on his own way of life, and although he suffered a lot, he still did not give up.
< H1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" died ></h1>
In the thirty-third year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1694 AD), Xu Fang died after writing the last pen, and only his daughter-in-law Hua Shi and grandson Xu Xiaguan survived in the family, and his friend Yang Zhenbai and his disciple Pan Qian, who had not returned from the trip, were appointed as orphans. Because the Xu family fell out with Xu Fang because of the Qing Dynasty's inventory of taxes in 1661, they refused Xu Fang to enter the ancestral cemetery. On the one hand, the daughter-in-law Hua Shi refused the donation of Jiangsu Inspector Song Jie, and on the other hand, he wanted to sell the caotang to bury Xu Fang, but was stopped by Pan Qian.
Pan Qian himself searched for funeral expenses for Xu Fang. And Zhou Maozao also raised donations for Xu Fang among the survivors, but everyone was very poor and could not raise funds, and finally Xu Fang's friend Dai Yi sold more than 40 gold, and then Pan Yun raised more than 70 gold and bought a piece of land to bury Xu Fang, after which Dai Yi sold the words again to raise more than 30 gold to plant pine cypresses, and Xu Fang's funeral was formed.
As for Hua And Xu Xiaguan, after Xu Fang's death, they had many difficulties and eventually died one after another.
The reason why Xu Fang's brilliant writing makes people feel so emotional that they burst into tears is because Xu Fang's life is a symbol of integrity in Chinese history, and on the historical stage of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, countless scholars, military generals, princes and nobles were ugly for the sake of glory and wealth, such as Hong Chengyu and Wu Sangui, who did not hesitate to act as traitors, wielding butcher knives to slash and kill their own people to serve the Manchu rulers. However, there was a group of scholars who fought against the Manchu rulers for the national spirit, and they witnessed the slaughter and oppression of advanced civilized areas, so they rose up to compete with the Manchu rulers. Xu Fang is only one of them, and in a sense a manifestation of the spirit of the Chinese scholars, who have used their lives to interpret a truth: what is ethics.
As a "lonely courtier" of the Ming Dynasty and a scholar who opposed "national integration", Xu Fang's life seems to have gained nothing, leaving only his own integrity and integrity and reputation in history.