01、
In the late spring of 1646, the Siming Mountains of Zhejiang Were shrouded in endless smoke and rain and chill. This year, Chen Zilong, a great talent of the late Ming Dynasty and known as the Embroidered Tiger in the Clouds, was thirty-eight years old, in the prime of his life when wen siquan was gushing and his physique was light and strong. At that time, in order to avoid the pursuit of the Qing army, he had been hidden for several months in the inaccessible depths of siming mountain.
Flowers fall in the spring, geese sing in the autumn, this was originally the most natural impulse of the Chinese literati, let alone at a time when the country is broken and the family is dead, the body is like Ping, and the sun is poor? In the spring of this year, Chen Zilong stood in front of the door of the hermit hut from time to time, and what jumped into his eyes in the drizzle of the shuttle was the colorful fall of the merciless wind and rapid rain.
Seeing the wounds of the objects, Chen Zilong wrote the most restrained and sad one of his few lyrics, which is the widely recited "Dotted Lips • Spring Wind and Rain Feeling":
Full of eyes Shaohua, the east wind is used to blow red. A few puffs of smoke, only flowers are difficult to protect. In the dream, the king Sun Lu. Spring is masterless, cuckoos crying, tears stained rouge rain.
【Siming Mountain】
02、
When every dynasty that enjoys a long period of time is destroyed, there will always be some literati who cry out for its demise, do not want to live, and even martyr themselves, which is not that the literati love the dynasty that does not necessarily love them more than ordinary people, but that a spirit called culture is at work in the depths of their blood.
More than two hundred years after the Jiashen Revolution, the Qing Dynasty, the biggest winner of the Jiashen Year, was refreshed by the Republic of China, like the Ming Dynasty that replaced it, and although the imperial system was abolished, the change of dynasties continued from beginning to end. At this time, a university scholar named Wang Guowei committed suicide by jumping into a lake, and in this regard, another scholar, Chen Yinke, analyzed in his eulogy why Wang Guowei committed suicide, and this explanation also applies to Chen Zilong's remembrance of his homeland:
"When a cultural value declines, the person who is transformed by this culture will feel pain, and the higher the degree to which it is expressed, the greater the suffering it will suffer; and if it reaches a very deep degree, it is not out of suicide that it is impossible to seek peace of oneself."
Another piece of evidence is the Austrian writer Zweig. In 1942, Zweig of Brazil, who had been exiled from Europe to almost the end of the world, committed suicide with his wife after writing the last part of his life to recall the past, "Yesterday's World".
In his suicide note, he expressed almost the same meaning as Chen Yinke: "After the world where my own language is spoken has fallen for me, and my spiritual homeland of Europe has self-destructed, I will no longer have anywhere to rebuild my life from scratch." ”
Compared with Wang Guowei and Zweig, Chen Zilong and them have the most important thing in common, they are all "people who have been transformed by this culture", and unfortunately they are in the "decline" of this culture.
However, Chen Zilong still has a considerable difference from Wang Guowei and Zweig, that is, Wang Guowei and Zweig are essentially authentic literati, and when the fate of the country and the individual is forcibly pushed away from the familiar established track by sudden changes, they choose to end their own lives to make a final passive struggle.
Chen Zilong is different, in this poet and lyricist who is considered to be the most important poet and lyricist of the late Ming Dynasty, he combines multiple personalities such as jianghu chivalry, literati, and capable officials, and these personalities are combined to a Chen Zilong who is similar to an angry youth.
[Chen Zilong played by Feng Shaofeng]
03、
In the late Ming Dynasty, the survival and lifestyle of the literati underwent many subtle changes compared with other eras, in a word, the assertion of personality.
The assertion of personality can be divided into two major aspects: first, indulging in or even abusing alcoholic women has become a fashion for the literati to practice; second, they are good at talking about state affairs and often make sharp and even reckless criticisms of current politics.
Therefore, close to the various historical multiplications of the past three hundred years, we can roughly restore the strange way of life and code of conduct of the late Ming Dynasty: they sometimes sat alone, worried and indignant, and the ancient benevolent people who lived in the height of the temple and worried about their people, and those who were far away from the rivers and lakes were worried about their kings; sometimes they went straight into the deep boudoir of the Qinglou, drank wildly, and traced them like crazy.
If we examine their behavior in terms of traditional moral codes, we may well be deeply confused: Are they good people doing bad things often, or are bad people doing good things often?
Considering the previous generations, the Chinese literati have always had a tradition of gentlemen who are not in the crowd and not in the party. According to classical norms, a person who aspires to become a gentleman should not and cannot gather the party and the masses, and only a small person who engages in conspiracy will form a party for personal gain.
This concept was no longer adhered to by the literati in the late Ming Dynasty, on the contrary, the most emblematic of the spiritual temperament of the late Ming Dynasty literati was the association. Therefore, the analysis of the angry young man Chen Zilong must begin with the Donglin Party, the largest and most influential literary group in the late Ming Dynasty, and at the same time the entire ancient China.
In 1610, the thirty-eighth year of the Wanli Calendar, Chen Zilong was still a two-year-old child. This year, Gu Xiancheng, a Zhishi official, gave lectures at Donglin Academy for scholars from all over the country, and as he spoke, his topic gradually deviated from poetry and turned to criticism of current politics, and when it came to excitement, the sixty-year-old man burst into tears and choked up and could no longer speak, and the audience had to be open-handed and sobbing.
This kind of exciting scene is not uncommon in this academy called Donglin, and from the day the academy opened, the literati gathered under the banner of Donglin never stopped at the exploration of scholarship and articles, preferring to care about current affairs and criticize the government, and most of the time voiced a voice that was contrary to the imperial court on how to save the survival in difficult times.
In other words, the Donglin Party was never simply a literary society where literati exchanged ideas or poetry and songs, but sought to create a small political group that could influence the decisions of the imperial court. The academy, funded by Ouyang Dongfeng, the prefect of Changzhou, and repaired on the site of the original Longcheng Academy, consists of dozens of houses rising from the river. Due to their growing fame and growing in popularity, many of Donglin's disciples lived in nearby temples.
On the gate of Donglin Academy, engraved a couplet written by Gu Xiancheng himself, even for ordinary Chinese, this couplet is so famous, even more than three hundred years later, many people only know this couplet and do not know what Gu Xiancheng and Donglin are: the sound of wind and rain reading, the sound of family affairs, state affairs, and everything is concerned
【Donglin College】
04、
The Donglin Party's concern for the current situation and sometimes almost sensational criticism have achieved two results: First, those in power are dissatisfied with it and gradually hate it to the bone; second, in the wild or undesirable officials flock to it, these people who admire the wind and righteousness and correspondingly regard themselves as the Donglin Party, among whom there are naturally many upright people who are really worried about the country and the people, but there is also no shortage of opportunistic and unscrupulous people who try to use Donglin as a springboard and thus have strange goods.
That is to say, when the leaders of the Donglin Party absorb all the people who have thrown themselves into the arms in order to expand their own strength, it is doomed to be a loose political organization with a mixture of fish and dragons and mud and sand. Later, Donglin was tragically purged, and even criticized by posterity, which was an important reason.
Today, when we objectively analyze the Donglin Party members, various historical clues show that under the banner of worrying about the country and the people, this political group has indeed absorbed a large number of loyal people with relative political integrity, who are not willing to be confined to academic articles like the literati of previous generations, but who strive to apply them to the world, hoping to influence the temple in LinQuan, and have indeed done some just things; however, while they have set high standards of political morality and political ethics, they often overcorrect and are suspected of political purity.
During the reign of the Donglin Party, what they did was far from the political ideals of their opposition. To sum up, in the short two years that the Donglin Party members were in power, they only did three things, and these three things, in addition to appointing Sun Chengzong to supervise Shanhaiguan, objectively delayed the entry of the Qing army into customs, and the other two things made the Donglin Party, like other small political interest groups they had sharply criticized, fall into the quagmire of partisanship but enjoy it.
First, a large number of people are used and promoted. Second, while developing the strength of their own small groups, they also exclude dissidents and attack other political small groups. This obvious improper behavior was taken for granted by the Donglin Party.
In the eyes of a group of relatively upright Donglin Party leaders, it seems that as long as the goal is noble, the means to achieve the goal can be chosen.
As a result of this administration by the Donglin Party, a considerable number of other group officials and neutrals defected to the rising eunuch leader Wei Zhongxian in search of protection. In the early years of the Apocalypse, the reuse of the Donglin Party and the grace of Wei Zhongxian are two threads of parallel development, and they are also the most characteristic features of imperial politics in the early years of the Apocalypse.
These two most important interest groups, as the contradictions between them accumulate day by day, both sides lose the patience and possibility of resolving the problem by peaceful means, just like two giants who look at each other and must resolve the intolerable opposition by means of a duel until one of them completely falls.
In the struggle against the castration party, the Donglin party members were completely out of their opponents, and in the end, not only Yang Lian and Zuo Guangdou and others died in prison, but as a political group, the Donglin party also lost the opportunity to take power in the empire. However, the factional struggle between the Donglin Party and the Castration Party and the rest of the evil ones has continued, from the Apocalypse to Chongzhen to the Southern Ming, until the complete demise of the Ming Dynasty, and this struggle has come to an end.
【Willow in film and television】
05、
The Donglin Party was defeated in the struggle against the castration party, but it won the sympathy and support of public opinion. Therefore, when the Donglin Party declined, other scholars chose the method of association and regarded themselves as the successors of the Donglin Party. Among them, the most important thing is the restoration society, and the main leaders of the restoration society are Zhang Pu and Chen Zilong.
Zhang Pu is a native of Taicang, Jiangsu Province, who has been a student since he was a child, and when he reads, he will copy it by hand, copy it and recite it again, burn it after recitation, copy it again, recite it again, and burn it again, so that it reaches six or seven rounds. Logically, he also read a lot of books because of this surprisingly hard reading.
In the social context of learning and excellence, intellectuals like Zhang Pu, who spit splendid embroidery and hide pearls in their stomachs, often promise themselves with the talent of the world, and the good luck they design is that after the cold window is painstakingly read, they pass the title of the gold list of the imperial examination, and even enter the picture.
But in fact, reading more does not mean that you have the ability to govern the country, nor does it mean that the king will give you the authority to govern the country and the world. Therefore, although Zhang Pu entered high school at the age of thirty, he only held such an optional and idle official position as Shu Jishi, which was undoubtedly judged by his political ideals. Therefore, he soon returned to his hometown of Taicang to continue reading and writing in Jiangnan, where the apricot blossoms and spring rains.
Like most literati who wield jade, when the ideal of reaching the monarch and realizing their political ambitions cannot be realized, they often choose other ways to realize their self-worth.
When Zhang Pu grew up, it was the time when the Donglin Party members were weakening due to the blows of the castration party. Although it does not have any real origin with Donglin, when "the four famous people fight for their doors", Zhang Pu naturally merges the many small societies in the Jiangnan region into one, known as the Fushe, and clearly regards himself as the successor of the Donglin Party.
After the establishment of the Fu Society, under the presidency of Zhang Pu, a total of three major activities were held, that is, three major gatherings, namely the Yinshan Conference, the Jinling Conference and the Tiger Hill Conference. Taking the Tiger Hill Assembly as an example, this conference is not only the largest in the history of the Restoration Society, but also widely regarded as a grand event that has never been held in the three hundred years of the Ming Dynasty.
Before the conference, Zhang Pu sprinkled hero stickers all over the place and invited scholars from all over the world. On that day, there were thousands of scholars from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Shanxi, Lianghu and Fujian, and the Daxiong Treasure Hall of Tiger Hill Temple was full of people, even the ShenggongTai and the Area of Thousand People Stone outside the main hall also became the venue, and the onlookers were countless.
The scholars who participated in the congress rushed to write the word Fushe on the lantern hanging high on the bow of the ship, and they were proud to be members of the Fushe Society, and even the unrelated scholars and doctors wrote the name of the Fushe on the lanterns, not only for their own use, but also for relatives and friends to borrow and hang for a few days, and for a time the lanterns with the words Fushe could be seen everywhere in Suzhou. The most bizarre thing is that the water thieves in Taihu Lake also played the brand of reinstatement to escape the pursuit of officers and soldiers.
When the Donglin Party declined, the Fu Society came out at an astonishing speed, which was indeed extraordinary. However, although Zhang Pu and other dignitaries of the Fu Society regard themselves as the successors of the Donglin Party, in essence, the political influence of the Fushe Society cannot be compared with the Donglin Party.
In other words, the restoration of the society is more than a gathering of literati. Qin Huai indulged in wine, Jinling sang songs, and Tiger Hill papers, although there were many people, there was neither an effective political program nor a political stage for them to display their ambitions in the world.
When they are drunk and hot, they talk about the state of the country, but they are just the wandering skeletons in the bones of the literati, which not only does not benefit the difficult situation, but gives the opponents a pretext. When they were embroiled in a political line struggle because of their connections with zhou Yanru, this self-proclaimed and noble literary society was in fact falling into the filthy earth.
【Suzhou Tiger Hill】
06、
The scholar Dai Mingshi, who later died tragically due to the disaster of writing, was born in the tenth year of Shunzhi, at that time, nearly ten years after the demise of Daming. Years later, when Dai Mingshi looked back on the political situation in the late Ming Dynasty, his criticism of the Donglin Party and the Fushe could be described as three points.
In his view, it is not the truth of history that hongguang's one-year death is completely attributed to Hongguang's fainting, and the truth of history is closer: Donglin and Fushe are party members who talk about great righteousness all day long without any really effective action, and these good-known and straight guys bear great responsibility for the demise of Nanming.
Although this point of view of Dai Mingshi is not without his righteous indignation, it also points out some of the truth of the matter, but among the gentlemen of Donglin and Fushe he criticizes, not all of them are people who have done a lot of work with each other, such as Chen Zilong.
When the change of Jiashen came irrepressibly, the years after the late Ming Dynasty poet Chen Zilong were entrusted to the broken mountains and rivers, he was no longer a gentle and elegant Confucian and literati, but an angry young man who was sad and sad, repeatedly strongly criticized the situation in Japan and Africa, and finally ran on the rivers and lakes to carry out armed struggle against the Qing Dynasty and the restoration of the Ming Dynasty.
Chen Zilong's later years—the term "old age" may be somewhat inaccurate, because Chen Zilong lived only forty years at an imaginary age, and perhaps it is more appropriate to say that he lived in the last years of his life—there are two things that haunt him the most:
The first, needless to say, is an infinite remembrance of the defunct Ming Empire;
The second is the deep nostalgia for a woman who was deeply in love in her early years. These two nostalgia can be seen from time to time in his later writings, such as:
The willows are lost in the dawn fog, and the apricot blossoms are scattered for five more bells. The moon outside the lonely Jingyang Palace shines red. The butterfly colored clothes are exhausted, and the insects are painted in the air. There are only ruthless double swallows, dancing east wind.
However, when Chen Zilong was full of sorrow and nostalgia for the two things that had worried him the most over the years, they had actually left him: the Hongguang Imperial Court that he had poured his blood on no longer existed, and the ideal of reviving Daming had finally become a cake, and even he himself had to live in the mountains and forests to avoid the approaching pursuit and judgment.
As for the woman who had had a vigorous and sweet love affair with herself more than ten years ago, she had now married the leader of the late Ming dynasty who she had admired for many years and was more than thirty years older than her, and this literary leader immediately surrendered to the Qing Dynasty after the Qing army captured Nanjing, and has since become the leader of the two dynasties that people ridiculed at the time.
This leader was Qian Qianyi, who was later included in the Biography of the Second Minister, and that woman was Liu Ruyi, who was fragrant to the present.
When Chen Zilong and Liu Ru first met, Chen Zilong was twenty-four years old, a good young man with a flourishing style, and Liu Ru was only fourteen years old, still a young girl in the cardamom age.
Judging from the portrait left by Liu Ru and the words left by the literati who interacted with her at that time, Liu Ru was petite in stature and ended up being pretty, but she was alert and courageous, plus she was knowledgeable and happy, and she wrote poems in rhyme, and she was instantly accomplished. Therefore, when Liu Ru, who was expelled from his house and had to fall into the Qinglou, was high and beautiful, for a while the local scholars thought it was fortunate that they could befriended him.
In his later years, the scholar Chen Yinke was ill with foot disease and blindness, but he wrote a huge work of 800,000 words in a half-wasted body, which is "Liu Ru is a Biography", which is a biography of a Qinglou woman at such a length, borrowing Chen Yinke's own words, but to show his independent spirit and free thought.
In Liu Ruyu's body, it is undoubtedly conveyed that in the late Ming Dynasty, when the world was in decline, it came from the independent and free personality of a strange woman. Many years later, when the change of Jiashen came, when the country was revolutionizing, Liu Ru had advised her husband Qian Qianyi to commit suicide and martyrdom, Qian Qianyi of course did not want to die, under Liu Ruyi's repeated requests, he only jumped into the pond, but after a while he got up from the pond and went ashore, complaining to Liu Ru: The pool water is too cold.
The "History of Ming" commented on Chen Zilong: "Born with different talents, working with children, concurrently ruling poetry and giving ancient texts, taking the Fa Wei and Jin, and being particularly exquisite in his body", he was generous and generous, and he was still a man and made wine. To sum up, Chen Zilong combines the temperaments of a well-versed reader of the Five Classics, a talented person who has seven steps into poetry, and a bold jianghu high-roller, and his personality charm is second to none among the late Ming dynasty literati.
For Liu Ru, falling into the Qinglou is a last resort, she is a strange woman who is conceited with literary talent, and of course is not willing to spend a short life like a spring flower in her laughing career. In the middle of the friendship with many merry people, her greatest hope is to be able to marry a Ruyi Langjun for a hundred years, and this Ruyi Langjun who can be entrusted for life, in her heart, is none other than Chen Zilong.
However, according to Mr. Chen Yinke's research, the time when the two really fell in love was actually only one spring and one autumn, a total of five or six months. The two later had to fly separately for three reasons:
First, when Chen Zilong and Liu Ru fell in love, they had already married their wives Zhang Shi and had two children. Although concubinage or prostitutes were common at the time, the Zhang clan was particularly opposed to this;
Second, Chen Zilong's economy is not rich, and Liu Ru was born in a family of brocade and jade food since childhood, spending money has always been generous, Chen Zilong is gradually unbearable - it turns out that romantic love must have a solid material foundation;
Third, Liu Ru was informal, naïve, and in addition to falling in love with Chen Zilong, he also had contacts with many celebrities at that time, but Chen Zilong was a reader with a bottom line.
Three reasons are superimposed, and the loving little lovers can only shed tears in the end. In Chen Zilong's youthful years, the disillusionment of love was undoubtedly the first blow. This seems to remind this brash young man that the road is difficult, and ru is good for himself.
After Chen Liu and the two broke up, they both wrote a lot of poems that miss each other, and these poems are still full of sorrow and difficult to dispel when read today. However, when the person concerned fondly clings to a short note to remember the old love that seems to be faintly like a paper, just as people cannot step into the same river for the second time, these loves are becoming more and more distant from them.
【Works by Chen Zilong】
07、
The reason why we position Chen Zilong as an angry youth in modern language is that he not only has a sentimental side, but also a side that he is sad and tries to turn the tide.
When the love is gone, Chen Zilong can only be accompanied by poetry books. Chongzhen ten years, Zhongjin shi, was immediately appointed as the Shaoxing push official. Tui Guan is an official in charge of the prison affairs of a prefecture, roughly equivalent to the president of the court of a prefecture-level city, and for the ambitious Chen Zilong, such a position certainly does not satisfy his desire for a future.
However, he also understood that according to the rules of the Empire over the years, an official like him who had passed the scientific examination and came from the right path could only continue to train from such a low position, and then it was possible to ascend along the established official ranks, and finally either become a feudal official or become the first assistant above ten thousand people under one person.
During shaoxing's promotion of the official position, Chen Zilong was enthusiastic and scrupulous in his duties, but soon became depressed due to an emergency.
In Dongyang County, under the jurisdiction of Shaoxing, there was an official eunuch named Xu Du, who was friends with Chen Zilong. Chen Zilong thought that this person was a talent, and had recommended it to his superiors, but his superiors were dismissive. Soon, Xu Du was falsely accused of gathering people to rebel because he had offended Dongyang County Ling. Xu Du was angry, and really gathered his disciples and followers, and attacked three county towns in succession.
The imperial court panicked and hurriedly sent Zuo Guangxian to lead an army to suppress it. When it was, Chen Zilong was appointed as the overseer under Zuo Guangxian. Chen Zilong proposed that he and Xu both had old and were willing to go and say surrender. Sure enough, after Some Patient Persuasion by Chen Zilong, under the premise of ensuring that as long as he surrendered, he would not be executed, Xu Du did indeed dismiss his followers and surrender to Zuo Guangxian.
However, Zuo Guangxian ignored Chen Zilong's repeated advice and insisted on putting Xu Du to death. Just when Chen Zilong was upset that he had not saved the life of his old friend, the imperial court ordered it down: because of the merits of the chaos, Chen Zilong was promoted to the rank of soldier.
The blood of old friends stained their official hats red, and what Chen Zilong brought to Chen Zilong, a generous and heroic man, was not joy, but extreme embarrassment and shame.
Therefore, Chen Zilong refused to take up his post as a passive protest. When he finally convinced himself that he was going to go to the post, an earth-shattering bad news suddenly came from the Capital Division: the Ming Empire had already perished.
Judging from the many poems written by Chen Zilong after the death of the Ming Dynasty, which cherished the homeland of Jiashan, this young talent with the temperament of jianghu and haojie was full of sincerity to the Ming Empire. When Li Zicheng's peasant army's Northern Expedition reached Shanxi, he and his friend Xia Yunyi had proposed a grand matter: he believed that since the land route from Nanjing to Beijing, since Henan and Shandong had been blocked by the peasant army, it might be possible to organize fleets from the Yangtze River into the sea, and then by sea to Tianjin, and then reinforce Beijing.
However, just as he and Xia Yunyi and others were planning this matter, he was transferred to Dongyang to suppress the rebellion of Xu Du, and after the Xu Du rebellion was settled, the great change of the heavens and the earth had already occurred, "overhearing the fall of Shenjing, the ascension of the former emperor."
After "drinking blood and breaking his heart, calling for no land", Chen Zilong left Shaoxing to go to Nanjing to take up a new post and serve as a soldier. Although the rank of the Military Division is low, it also has considerable powers because he is a speech officer and is responsible for the supervision of the Military Department. Chen Zilong hastily resigned after less than ten months in this position, and the reason for his resignation was simple and helpless: in the vast city of Nanjing, he could not see the future of this small imperial court that was partial to the left of the Anjiang River.
During the short military service, Chen Zilong did two things - saying that he did it was actually a bit reluctant, and it should be said that he wanted to do it but did not do it in the end:
One is Shangshu's request to Hongguang to "be careful with the name device". The Hongguang regime's means of enlisting important ministers was to constantly give them officials and knighthoods, which was an out-and-out indiscriminate reward. Chen Zilong severely criticized the ills of this indiscriminate reward.
The second was Shangshu Hongguang, who asked the imperial court to strengthen the defense of the Yangtze River. Chen Zilong believed that the revenge of the emperor's father must not be repaid, and the land of the Central Plains must not be recovered, and in order to realize such an ideal, we must first protect Jiangnan, and if we want to protect Jiangnan, we must guard the Yangtze River, we must guard the Yangtze River, and it is imperative to form a powerful water division.
However, it was impossible for Hongguang, who was drunk and dreaming of death, to listen to the words of a low-level official like Chen Zilong, and even if he did, he had no interest in it; and Ma Shiying and others who had abused power were now busy consolidating their positions and eliminating different parties, let alone paying attention to the chatter of a small official who had just been transferred back to the capital from other places.
【Hongguang Tongbao, which has only been used for two years】
08、
The meaning of angry youth refers to Chen Zilong's heroic personality and the spirit of outspoken criticism of the situation in Chen Zilong's bones. When he gradually saw that it was completely impossible for the Hongguang court to realize ZTE's ideals, he had slowly lost interest and confidence in continuing to stay in the military department.
However, before choosing to resign, he held the mentality of a dead horse as a living horse doctor and once again wrote to Hongguang. In the song, Chen Zilong unceremoniously criticized those in power: in the middle of the Qing song leaking boat, drinking bitterly and burning inside the house. The boat has leaked, you are still singing and dancing; the house is on fire, you are still drunk and dreaming.
This fierce criticism was sent into the deep palace held up by the nine-fold cornice, like a drop of water dripping into the ocean, without seeing any reaction.
Chen Zilong was completely disappointed, and in the early spring of 1645, when Nanjing was still a warm and cold Xiao Suo, Chen Zilong resigned from the military section to give the matter, took a servant, got on a donkey cart, and left Nanjing, the land of gold powder of the Six Dynasties, with great depression.
Xia Yunyi is not only Chen Zilong's hometown and the same year, but also a colleague of the Fu Society, and a friend who cares for each other. When Chen Zilong planned to organize a fleet to rescue Beijing by sea, Xia Yunyi was the first to stand up and respond. Xia Yunyi's son is more famous than his, that is, the famous young hero Xia Wanchun, and Xia Wanchun is Chen Zilong's student.
Xia Wanchun was known as a prodigy in his early years, and when he was executed by Hong Chengzu after he was executed by Hong Chengzu after the failure of the qing uprising with his father and teacher, he was only seventeen years old, and today, he is still an ignorant teenager in high school.
When the Father and Son of the Xia family and Chen Zilong were in Nanjing, they often interacted, and the poems written by Xia Wanchun were also sent to the teacher Chen Zilong for comment. Once, Xia Wanchun sent Chen Zilong an article criticizing the current situation, in which Xia Wanchun denounced The Nanjing Wen Tian Wu Xi at that time, not knowing that the disaster was coming.
After counting all kinds of abuses, Xia Wanchun criticized the two people dressed in strange costumes, believing that such clothing was simply a sign of the subjugation of the country. The ancients have always firmly believed that when a country is about to die, there will be demons, and this demon is sometimes a sound of silence, sometimes a calamity, and sometimes a strange costume.
The two people who were reprimanded were a talented politician Ruan Dacheng and Chen Zilong's old lover Liu Ruyi. Xia Wanchun's criticism of Ruan and Liu's strange costumes seems to be extreme, but in the concept of the people at that time, the country moved to the top, the imperial court was in a corner of peace, and Ruan and Qian, as the important ministers of the country, either made up their own strange makeup or allowed their wives and concubines to dress differently, so in the eyes of the indignant young heroes, this was a sign of the uncompromising subjugation of the country, and they must be responsible for the great tragedy of the country's imminent demise.
In fact, Liu Ruyi's attire and Qian Qianyi's ability or not are two different things, but the ancients liked to put all the problems into morality, which can be called pan-moralization.
After reading Gaozu's works, what kind of feeling will Chen Zilong feel in his heart about the old lover whom Gaozu denounced? Sad yeah? Cry yeah? Pain yeah? History has left us too much room for imagination, which is why people and things that are too old can still make people thousands of years later worry about their stomachs.
All in all, state affairs are no longer possible, old lovers and political enemies are in and out of pairs, so Nanjing has lofty ambitions, and Chen Zilong, who often takes it as his duty to turn the tide of the tide and support the building, is a heavy blow. He had no choice but to leave, and besides, he still had his ninety-year-old grandmother to worship.
Chen Zilong left Nanjing in grief for only three months, the Qing army crossed the river on iron horses, and the Hongguang regime collapsed. After more than two months, his good friend Xia Yunyi "wandered between the mountains and wanted to do something", but what he got one after another was the bad news that his friends had committed suicide or been killed.
Like Xia Yunyi, Chen Zilong had also considered suicide, but he still had a ninety-year-old grandmother in his family, and the ancients loved to say a word, that is, since ancient loyalty and filial piety could not be complete, for Chen Zilong, life and death were indeed a problem. In the end, he chose to cut his hair and become a monk, and became a monk in Jiaxing's Shuiyue Nunnery. Soon, as the wind grew tighter, he fled to the Siming Mountains again, leaving behind the long, affectionate words quoted at the beginning of this article.
After that, the old grandmother died peacefully, and Chen Zilong no longer had any worries - in the eyes of the ancients, in addition to his parents and elders who needed to fulfill filial piety, they could become their own worries, and his wife had nothing to do with the grand purpose and could be ignored.
At this time, King Jianguo of Lu called on people from near and far in Fujian to send People's Dao to find Chen Zilong, hoping that he would contact the water thieves of Taihu Lake and use this as a basis to form an anti-Qing army. Chen Zilong agreed. However, due to the leakage of secrets, the Qing army arrested Chen Zilong everywhere, and Chen Zilong's comeback was tantamount to throwing himself into the net: his servant Mao Tai informed the Qing army, and Chen Zilong became a prisoner of the Qing army.
After Chen Zilong was arrested, there was a conversation with Chen Jin, the Qing general who was responsible for interrogating him. Chen Zilong was escorted into the interrogation room, standing upright and not worshipping, and his look did not change. Chen Jinjiu asked him: Why don't you have xue hair? Chen Zilong said: Stay here to see the former emperor underground. Chen Jin asked again: Where is your accomplice? Chen Zilong replied: Wen Tianxiang has only one person.
In view of the fact that Chen Zilong was both a leader in the literary circles at that time and a leader of the anti-Qing resistance that was deeply respected by the people, the Qing army took him as a felon and was escorted to Nanjing by Songjiang. When the heavily guarded wooden boat was marching on the canal, he took advantage of the negligence of the guards and jumped into the rapid waves, and the guards hurriedly reached out to grab him and wanted to pull him onto the boat, but Chen Zilong instead dragged the unfortunate soldier into the water, and the two died together.
Chen Zilong, who was talented and angry, ended his life in this unexpected posture, it was a year, Chen Zilong was forty years old. Chen Zilong's place of water is exactly his hometown of Songjiang. A person who has spent his life longing for a distant place and longing for meritorious service finally dies in despair in his hometown, which is more like a cruel joke made by fate.
【Shanghai Songjiang, Chen Zilong's hometown】
09、
Although Chen Zilong died, the Qing army still punished him with a corpse, and as for his talented and intelligent students, they were also arrested behind Chen Zilong.
After Xia Wanchun was taken to Nanjing, it was Hong Chengyu who was responsible for interrogating him. Hong already knew that Xia Wanchun was a famous prodigy in Jiangnan, and when he saw that he was young, he had the heart to persuade him to surrender, and he said to Xia gently: I see that when you are young, you may not be able to rebel, but you will certainly be instructed by others, as long as you submit to the Great Qing, not only will you be spared death, but also officials.
Xia Wanchun pretended not to know that it was Hong Chengyu who interrogated him, and replied: There is a person named Mr. Hengjiu in my dynasty, who was martyred in the Battle of Songshan and shocked China and foreign countries, and I admired his loyalty, although he was young, he killed himself to serve the country, how could he fall behind him? Heng Jiu is Hong Chengyu's character, and he listens to Xia Wanchun's words and knows that Xia is satirizing him, which is greatly embarrassed.
The stupid officials under them who were like wolves and tigers seriously told Xia Wanchun: Don't talk nonsense, it is Lord Hong sitting on it.
Xia Wanchun scolded bitterly: Mr. Hong sacrificed for the country, who in the world does not know, the former emperor personally set up sacrifices, how dare you pretend to be a martyr? Hong Chengyu sweated like pulp, and the interrogation ended in a hurry.
In September 1647, Xia Wanchun, who was seventeen years old, was executed in Nanjing. Previously, when he was captured in his hometown of Matsue, he wrote a work similar to a desperate poem, entitled "Don't Be in the Clouds"—Cloud, which is the ancient name of Matsue. This poem, Shu Ji, can also be seen as the song of the lives of the two generations of literati of the Xia family and Chen Zilong: three years of detaining travelers, and today they are crowned south. Infinite rivers and mountains tears, who speaks the heavens and the earth wide. It is known that the spring road is close, and it is difficult to leave the hometown. On the day of the return of Yi Lu, the spirit flag was seen in the air.
【Xia Wanchun and his father】
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After breaking up with Chen Zilong, Liu Ru, a talented woman of the generation, later married Qian Qianyi, a university scholar and senior official. In the third year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Qian Qianyi died at the age of eighty-three, and he was proud of his life's officialdom, love field, and literary field.
After Qian's death, the clan chased after Liu Ru's inheritance, and Liu Ru was forced to hang himself on the beam at the age of forty-seven. At that time, Chen Zilong had been dead for almost twenty years. Only the works left by Chen Zilong and Liu Ruru, as well as a few lines of text in the history books, can also make people roughly restore the poignant love affair of the talented and beautiful person more than three hundred years ago. Along with this poignant affair is the complete change of the Ming Dynasty and the sudden rise of the three hundred years of the Qing Dynasty.
Chen Zilong, who is in this background, whether he is a talent or an angry youth, he has never been able to get out of the fate imposed on him by history. All this is exactly as camus's great work, The Myth of Sisyphus, came out of nowhere: the tragedy of Sisyphus is that his fate belongs to him, and so does his boulder.