#Boutique long essay creation season#"Erjin Palace" those things
Remembering Jiangnan
Peking Opera "Erjin Palace" is one of the most famous opera repertoire, in the play between Li Yanfei, Dingguo Gong Xu Yanzhao and the military department squire Yang Bo between the three of the three of the singing can be described as popular, can be called a classic of the pear garden. Strictly speaking, these three characters do not exist in history, however, they are not fictional out of thin air, we can find them in the important figures of the Jiajing, Longqing, and Wanli dynasties in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
"Erjin Palace" tells such an uncomplicated story: after the death of the old emperor, the infant prince succeeded to the throne, and Concubine Li Yan, who was promoted to the prince of the Dragon Kingdom, listened to the government. Concubine Li Yan was deceived by her father Li Liang, who was plotting against her, and actually planned to temporarily entrust Jiangshan Sheji to her father, Xu Yanzhao, the Duke of Dingguo, and Yang Bo, the squire of the military department, rushed to Longfeng Pavilion to severely admonish them, Li Yanfei was obsessed and refused to accept the advice, and the two sides launched a fierce argument, and finally broke up. When Li Liang blocked Zhaoyang Courtyard and intended to put Concubine Li Yan and the little emperor under house arrest, Concubine Li Yan knew that Li Liang was trying to usurp the throne and stand on her own, but she regretted it too much. Xu Yanzhao and Yang Bo entered the palace for the second time after visiting the imperial tomb, and Concubine Li Yan, who had already repented, entrusted them with state affairs, and soon after, Yang Bo mobilized men and horses to destroy Li Liang's plot to seize the throne and beheaded Li Liang.
Throughout the 280-year history of the Ming Dynasty, there should be only one concubine surnamed Li who assisted the young emperor to ascend the throne, that is, the biological mother of the Wanli Emperor, the Empress Dowager Li. Empress Dowager Li entered Yuwang's Mansion as a palace maid, and she was only a fifteen-year-old girl at that time. Later, Li Gongnu was fortunate to be favored by Zhu Zaiyuan, the king of Yu, and also gave birth to a son, this boy is the future Wanli Emperor. After the death of Emperor Jiajing, Zhu Zaiyuan succeeded to the throne as Emperor Longqing, and the Li palace maid, who had been promoted to a side concubine because of the birth of a son, was promoted to another level, and turned gorgeously to become a noble and important Li Guifei in the harem.
Concubine Li Yan has a father named Li Liang, and Concubine Li Guifei has a father with a large size Li Wei, although Li Wei is not as suspicious and ambitious as Li Liang, and wants to usurp the throne and become the emperor, but it doesn't seem to be a positive character.
Li Wei was originally a lowly mason, because his daughter was named a noble concubine and turned into a commander of the Jinyi Guard, and later, his grandson Wanli Emperor ascended the throne, Li Wei Jin Jue Wu Qingbo, don't underestimate this title, this is a knighthood on an equal footing with the sincerity of Liu Bowen, the founding minister of the Ming Dynasty. Ten years later, Li Wei's title was promoted to the Marquis of Wuqing, and both sons were also made governors.
In the early years of Wanli, Li Wei, as the grandfather of the little emperor, was very active, participated in almost all the national ceremonies, and also built a large number of buildings on the outskirts of the capital, built a Tsinghua Garden that can be called the first garden of the Beijing Division, according to the Ming Dynasty people wrote the "Zenong Yin" recorded: "Wuqing Hou Haidian Beiye led the spring of the West Mountain into a huge immersion, the wall is about ten miles, and the water occupies half of it. Stacked rocks are mountains, and caves are secluded. The canal can be transported by boat, spanning with double bridges. Flowers and fruits are planted beside the embankment, thousands of peonies, and tens of thousands of peonies. ”
About a hundred years later, Emperor Kangxi built Xichun Garden on the site of Li Wei Qinghua Garden, Xichun Garden was divided into two gardens in the east and west during the Daoguang period, the garden in the west was renamed "Near Spring Garden", the garden in the east was still called "Xichun Garden", Xianfeng ascended the throne and renamed the Xichun Garden in the east as Tsinghua Garden, which is the predecessor of the current Tsinghua Garden.
The thorn in the eye of the old national zhang Li Liang in "Second Entrance to the Palace" is the thorn in the flesh of the Dingguo Duke Xu Yanzhao and the military department Shangshu Yang Bo, and the enemy in the eyes of the old national abbot Li Wei in history is the No. 1 person in the cabinet, Zhang Juzheng, a famous minister of Wanli. Zhang Juzheng was Empress Dowager Li's most trusted minister, and she entrusted Zhang Juzheng with the Ming Dynasty's Jiangshan Sheji and the education of the Wanli Emperor, which naturally caused her father Li Wei's dissatisfaction. So, as soon as Zhang Juzheng took power, Li Wei began to find fault. At that time, the treasury was extremely empty, and it was simply penniless, and Zhang Juzheng had to use the stock of pepper and sumu to pay the salaries of the Beijing officials. The father-in-law Li Wei and the horse master Xu Congcheng attacked Zhang Juzheng for carrying out the "harsh government", and wanted to use this incident to pull Zhang Juzheng off the horse, but fortunately, the Empress Dowager Li was not a fool and did not listen to her father's words, which made Zhang Juzheng's Wanli New Deal avoid the bad luck of being destroyed in the bud.
Li Wei not only troubled Zhang Juzheng, but also harmed Qi Jiguang, a famous anti-Japanese general. In order to curry favor with the father-in-law, Wang Chongguang, the governor of Jizhou, gave Li Wei the business of customizing 200,000 sets of military cotton jackets as a gift, but he didn't expect Li Wei, the old man, to be too dark, and accepted Wang Chongguang's 200,000 taels of silver, but only took out 50,000 taels to find someone to make a cotton jacket, and the remaining 150,000 taels of silver were put into his own pocket. What was the result? The padded jackets were so substandard that they did not keep them warm at all, and even 19 of the Great Wall guards were frozen to death. As the guard of the Great Wall, Qi Jiguang was furious and quickly reported to the imperial court, and in the face of the human tragedy caused by Li Wei's greed, Empress Dowager Li had to punish her father for half a year.
Li Liang, the national abbot with Li Wei as the prototype, was killed by Yang Bo, the squire of the military department, in the play "Erjin Palace", but Yang Bo, the historical prototype of Yang Bo, had actually traveled west with a crane nine years before Li Wei's death, and the reason why Yang Bo was written into the famous drama "Erjin Palace" was that he did make outstanding contributions to the Jiangshan Sheji of the Ming Dynasty.
Although Yang Bo was far less famous than Qi Jiguang, his exploits in resisting the invasion of the Mongols and northwestern nomads were almost comparable to Qi Jiguang's anti-Japanese cause.
Unlike Qi Jiguang, Yang Bo is a patriotic general who was born as a jinshi, in other words, he is a military talent with both civil and military skills, and the reason why Yang Bo, the soldier who is based on him in "Second Entrance to the Palace", is probably the reason why he should be employed by Wen Laosheng.
It is precisely because Yang Bo was born as a civilian official that while he is good at governing the army and brave in combat, he also has the excellent qualities of being meticulous and loving the people like a son, which are rare among military generals. When he inspected the "Nine Frontiers" with the scholars, he made very detailed and complete records of the topography, customs, and combat effectiveness of the mountains and rivers in the various border defense areas, and laid a solid foundation for successfully defending the border in the future. Later, he was ordered to patrol Gansu, in Ganzhou, Suzhou and other places to build a large number of tuntian, recruit people to reclaim wasteland that did not need to pay rent, and led the people to build military facilities in the agricultural slack season, actively prepare for war, and formed a social atmosphere in the northwest border where all the people are soldiers, so that the nomads did not dare to invade, and the order in Gansu was orderly.
Soon, Yang Bo was promoted to the rank of squire of the military department because of his meritorious service in guarding the border and exposing the corrupt official Qiu Luan, and was also responsible for the defense of Jizhou and Baoding, and guarded the security of the capital Beijing.
In the thirty-third year of Jiajing, that is, in 1554, more than 100,000 Mongolian cavalry launched a fierce attack on the Gubeikou of Jizhou.
The following year, the Mongols attacked again and were repelled by Yang Bo, who was thus promoted to the secretary of the military department and became the commander-in-chief of the entire "nine-sided" defense system.
During his tenure of office, Yang Bo repaired garrison facilities in various border areas, built castle piers, and strived to block the passage of Mongolians and other nomads from entering the Ming Dynasty. The emperors of Jiajing and Longqing relied on him very much, regarded him as his right and left hand, and his status in the court was higher than this.
Another reason is that Yang Bo has an amazing fellow countryman.
Where is Yang Bo from? Puzhou, Shanxi, that is, Yongji City, Shanxi Province, is this place familiar to everyone? The martial saint Guan Yuguan was born in this place! Yang Bo, who was accustomed to conquest and was accustomed to warfare, and was an all-round scholar and military officer, happened to be the same townsman as Guan Shengren, who was powerful in China and studied the Spring and Autumn Period at night, so in the minds of the common people of the "Nine Sides," Yang Bo became to a certain extent the embodiment of the loyal and righteous Guan Yu, and later he was written into a drama and transformed into Yang Bo, the squire of the great loyal minister and the military department in "The Second Entrance to the Palace."
Compared with Yang Bo, although Xu Yanzhao's character prototype has a very noble status, his achievements are inferior, and this prototype is not a person, but two generations of father and son, his father is called Xu Yande, and his son is called Xu Wenbi.
Xu Yande is the seventh grandson of Xu Da, the first hero of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, and Jiajing took the title of Duke of Dingguo in the eighth year, with 2,500 stones. In the thirtieth year of Jiajing, Xu Yande was appointed as the head of the Governor's Office of the Chinese Army, and like Yang Bo, he became a minister particularly trusted by the emperor. Judging from the name, Xu Yande and Xu Yanzhao are very similar, but Xu Yande died as early as the first year of Longqing, and it is impossible for him to appear on the political stage when Emperor Wanli succeeded to the throne, and the Duke of Dingguo at that time was his son Xu Wenbi. Xu Wenbi is not an old man with a white beard like Dingguo Gong in the play, but a cautious and old-fashioned young man, this reassuring character makes him deeply trusted by the Wanli Emperor, so much so that the Wanli Emperor has asked him to go to the Temple of Heaven to worship the heavens on his behalf several times. Xu Wenbi not only cares about state affairs but also loves the people, he has written to the emperor several times to ask for the early establishment of the crown prince to settle the world, and has also repeatedly suggested that the emperor remove the mine supervisor and benefit the people.
So, why did the person who wrote the play "Erjin Palace" name the Dingguo Gong in the play Xu Yanzhao? The author does not dare to speculate on the reason, but there is a fact that I can share with you - there is a very important scene in "Erjin Palace" called "Visiting the Emperor's Mausoleum", which sings the story of the two loyal ministers of Dingguo Gong and the military department who went to visit the tomb of the first emperor, and the imperial tomb of the first emperor Long Qingye happened to be called Zhaoling.
Xu Yanzhao's name and the name of the first emperor's mausoleum happen to share the word "Zhao", it shouldn't be just a simple coincidence, right?