"Chronicle of the Ancient City" Liaoyang Characters and Literature - He Mengyao, a famous qing dynasty physician with erudition and talent

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Portrait of He Mengyao

He Mengyao (1693-1764), zi baozhi, number Xichi, in his later years called himself a farmer, a native of Nanhai, Guangdong. Yongzheng was a jinshi in the eighth year, and served as a zhi county in many places in Guangxi and Zhizhou in Liaoyang. Erudite and talented, especially in poetry, Ji Shi loves the people, is proficient in medicine, and is a representative figure of Lingnan medical scientists. In his later years, he resigned from Liaoyang and returned to his hometown to be treated for the elderly. There are many kinds of writings such as medicine, literature, and scripture.

He Mengyao was born in Nanhai County, Guangdong Province, and served as the pastor of Liaoyang Prefecture from the tenth year of Qianlong (1745) to fifteen years (1750), which was not a long time, but it had an important impact on his ideological changes.

He Mengyao has been "brilliant in his understanding since childhood, able to write at the age of ten, and thirteen works of poetry", and studied with Mai Yiyuan in Foshan, Guangdong Province, when he was a teenager, and Mai Yiyuan's noble character, rigorous attitude and profound knowledge all had an important impact on him. Although He Mengyao was talented and very hard-working when he was young, he repeatedly failed. During this time, he worked as a private school teacher, and later went to the Inspectorate as an errand boy, but because his work was not satisfactory, he only worked for three months before he brushed up his sleeves and continued to march towards his dream of the imperial examination.

In the fifty-ninth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1720), the famous scholar Hui Shiqi served as a Scholar of Guangdong and examined the students at the Jiuyaofang Xuezheng Office in Guangzhou with the title of "Bamboo Branch Words". He He Mengyao took the exam and made "Six Songs of Bamboo Branches of the Pearl River", which was appreciated by Hui Shiqi, and was named a student (Xiu Cai) and officially entered Huimen. Huimen's study life increased his knowledge and vision, and the "Nanxiang Poetry Society" they founded in Guangzhou became famous. He Mengyao's erudition was able to exert himself during this period, he was able to write poetry and study medicine, became one of the "Four Juns of Huimen", and was praised by his mentor as the "Pearl of the South China Sea".

In the seventh year of Yongzheng (1729), the 37-year-old He Mengyao Zhongju, the following year, tried to win the joint victory, passed the examination for the jinshi, and was assigned to Guangxi to serve, starting his career. During his tenure as an official, He Mengyao's study and application of medicine never stopped, and because of his literary fame, he revised the "Guangxi Provincial Chronicle" and "Cen Xi County Chronicle", successively serving as the commander of Guangxi Yining, Yangshuo, Cen Xi, and Si'en County for more than ten years.

In the tenth year of Qianlong (1745), with the sentiment of "where is Liaoyang in the dream, and the distant sky is hanging on the green mountain", He Mengyao, who was in the year of heavenly destiny, was promoted to the post of pastor of Fengtian Liaoyang Prefecture, and came from the four seasons of Lingnan to the distant northeast of Saiwai. In the days of living in Liaoyang, he took politics and practicing medicine as the two main lines of life, and the "County Chronicle" described it as a political style with "talent and sensitivity, dissection like a stream"; at the same time, the style of "taking medicine as a politician" still accompanied him, and he wrote a large number of medical works for the people to diagnose diseases and work tirelessly. In his poem "Xiangping Miscellaneous Verses in Old Du Qinzhou (Part III)" (hereinafter referred to as "Xiangping Miscellaneous Songs") in Liaoyang, he outlined his daily life in this way: "Xiangping Old Thorn History, writing about Changsha. The medicine record hangs in thousands of volumes, and the state map leads to ten thousand families", and notes himself "Nine kinds of medical books written by Shi Fang", which shows that his research on medicine at that time had achieved considerable results.

He Mengyao was an upright official, an outstanding healer, and an outstanding literati. He was one of the representatives of Lingnan poets in the Yongqian period, and his poems were mainly manifested in paying attention to people's livelihood and suffering, recording local customs and characteristics, describing the scenery of the road, rewarding relatives and friends, and expressing his aspirations, leaving the "Poetry Banknotes of The Garden of The Fangfang" to be handed down. His poetic style is sometimes fresh and elegant, sometimes sad and solemn, in the "Xiangping Miscellaneous Songs", he uses twenty five-sentence poems to record the situation and mood of his life in Liaoyang, reflecting the social life and customs of the Liaoyang area at that time. "How can the forest choose, and swim for thousands of miles." Saibei people are empty and old, and the hedge Dongju is from autumn" is to lament the passage of time; "Liaocheng has a good flavor, and the white is small out of the ice sky." Buying sugar over the ancient temple, Chengmian filtered the new spring "is a flavor specialty that praises Liaoyang;" The riverside ice will pan, and the Tangqian Yan has not returned. The wine is reduced for many days, and the flowers are slightly springy" tells the true fun of daily life; "Looking east at the skyscrapers, the peaks and peaks are showing off." The yin cliffs are covered with snow, and the valleys are half cloudy" is to depict the natural scenery of Liaoyang; "Jinbi Huaiwang Temple, empty Mi Wanbei Spring." San Francisco has been exhausted, and the second fan has been passed down to this day" "Xuan Xuan called Xiong County, the old emperor of Liaojin" and "Poor Gongsun Clan, the rise and fall refers to Gu Jian." The head of the square is thousands of miles, the star has set in the front mountain, "many articles reminisce about the ancient past of Liaoyang ... The arrival of He Mengyao enabled Liaoyang to harvest a poetic and cultural heritage, and these poems became precious materials for recording the style and culture of Liaoyang. The "County Chronicle" commented that he was a "graceful official".

According to records, when He Mengyao was serving in Liaoyang, there was a mental patient named Wang Hong, who had a great power when he had a seizure, and once he actually lifted a person into the fire and burned the person to the point of exhaustion. He Mengyao first applied medicine to the injured person, and it healed in a few days. He sat down in the court again, and ordered the messenger to arrest Wang Hong, and the king scolded and sang, and the madness remained. He Mengyao first used torture to make him afraid, and then poured medicine on him. Soon the king vomited heavily, his consciousness was clear, and the symptoms disappeared. Onlookers were amazed and admired. He Mengyao's medical skills were far away from Fengtian.

Because He Mengyao was a wise and sensitive official, erudite and talented, and treated the people, he was loved by the local people of Liaoyang and won the reputation of "the most negative name He Thorn History". But at this time, he was more than half a hundred years old, and the harsh climate in the northeast, coupled with the death of relatives and friends such as his brother and mentor, made him feel sad and uncomfortable, and his health deteriorated. He wrote in the "Xiangping Miscellaneous Verses": "The hot intestines are cold together, and the xuan sideburns are shining." Arm pain and sorrow fall off, the head spins fear of flying at night" "A lifetime of forgetting joy, this day is difficult." Beg for hard liver and intestines, support the bone marrow dry", in the "Weeping Mai Yi Garden Master Qi five", said: "Mengqiu was not far away, and he was an old protégé." A few of the same generation are in the same generation, and the decline of the year is out of the line. The sun is still peeping, and the spring is lost in the mountain clear. Learning is sad and desolate, and the wind is full of tears. At this time, He Mengyao lamented the impermanence of life and was tired of his official eunuch career, so he asked the old man to return to his hometown.

In the fifteenth year of the Qianlong Dynasty (1750), He Mengyao, who was nearly a flower armour, made a difficult choice, decided to abandon the official and go into hiding, left Liaoyang, which had been an official for five years, returned to Lingnan, and began to "hang the pot for self-sufficiency" and "end up with medicine". Nearly twenty years of eunuch experience brought He Mengyao not a family property, but nothing. His friend described his family as "the old house is raftered, only sheltered from wind and rain, the medicine in the lyre, and there is no long thing outside", but he is also comfortable. After retiring to his hometown, he returned to his beloved medical world, he often walked in the folk, treated the people, and was enthusiastic about education, preaching and teaching, and successively served as the chief of the three major academies of Guangzhou Yuexiu, Zhaoqing Duanxi, and Guangzhou Yuehua. His teaching focuses on character and practical application, teaching students all aspects of medicine, music law, mathematics and other aspects, and making important contributions to the cause of lingnan education. During his lifetime, he wrote a lot of works, including "Poetry notes in The Garden of Theory", "Zhuangzi Gu", "Huangji Jing", "GengheLu", "Medical Records" and other more than a dozen books involving literature, medicine, and scriptures. His new theory and efficacy of Lingnan TCM are recognized by the society, "the people of the Southern Belt take its agents as effective as gods".

In his twilight years, He Mengyao, as always, followed his philosophy of practicing medicine of "medicine and Taoism", and died at the age of 72 in the twenty-ninth year of Qianlong (1764). What he left to posterity is the reputation of "the first national hand in the ancient and modern medical field in eastern Guangdong" and the quiet and far-reaching indifferent life.

Source: Liaoyang Municipal Archives Bureau