Text/Bamboo a few lights people dream
The name Li Ju Lotus (also known as Li Ju Coupling) is unfamiliar to many people, but you must have heard the names of Li Ju Lotus's father and granddaughter. Li Juling's father was Li Hongzhang, a famous minister of the late Qing Dynasty; and her granddaughter was Zhang Ailing, a famous writer in modern times. Although Li Juling herself is not so famous, she is also a talented woman who became famous in the late Qing Dynasty, but what people talk about her is her legendary marriage.
Li Ju Lotus' name is Li Jingxuan, small character Ju Lotus, born in 1866. As the second daughter of Li Hongzhang, Li Jurong has lived a life of fine clothes and food since birth. His father, Li Hongzhang, was influenced by Western culture and attached great importance to this daughter, regarding her as a pearl in the palm of his hand and carefully teaching her from an early age.
In 1988, the 22-year-old Li Jurong had come out of the woods and was very talented, and people called her "excellent poetry and literature", which can be described as a famous talented woman at that time. However, her family is prominent and ice-smart, but in this year, she was promised by her father to Zhang Peilun, who was in her 20s and over forty years old.
People who have a certain understanding of the marriage system in China's feudal period know that in feudal society, the status of women was very low, and even after a large number of missionaries poured into China at that time to spread the Idea of Christian equality between men and women, the traditional Chinese idea of male superiority and female inferiority has not been basically changed, and it is also natural for parents to arrange marriages. But is Li Hongzhang really a cruel father who wants to marry such an elderly man regardless of his daughter's happiness?
As for Li Hongzhang's evaluation, historians have different opinions, and it is true that as a late Qing minister who signed a series of unequal treaties on behalf of the Qing government, he was permanently nailed to the column of shame of history by the world. However, we have to admit that Li Hongzhang, as one of the main leaders of the western affairs movement, was also a relatively advanced person at that time. He once visited Europe and the United States, was greatly shocked by the prosperity of Europe and the United States at that time, and after returning to China, he actively played the song, believing that the Qing government "urgently needed to find ways" to deal with China's poverty and weakness.
It can be seen that Li Hongzhang himself is not an absolutely pedantic and conservative person, and he has accepted the advanced cultural ideas of the West to a certain extent, which can also be seen from his attention and education to Li Jurong. Li Hongzhang's attention and love for Li Jurong is true, but why does Li Hongzhang, who has always been fond of Li Jurong, insist on marrying his daughter to Zhang Peilun? Is it really Li Hongzhang who is confused?
This is not the case. To analyze Li Hongzhang's motives for marrying a daughter, we should first find out who Zhang Peilun really is.
Zhang Peilun (張佩纶), courtesy name Youqiao, was also a famous courtier at the end of the Qing Dynasty. Zhang Peilun had a quick mind since childhood, exported into chapters, raised people in the nine years of Tongzhi, entered the priesthood in the middle of the ten years, taught editing and revision in thirteen years, and was later promoted to the rank of attendant (official name, from Sipin) because of the top ranking in the first year of Guangxu's great examination of Han Zhan. The main tasks are the revision, editing and review of literature and history). As a Member of the Qingliu Party, he entered the Li Hongzhang Curtain, repeatedly wrote to impeach ministers, criticized the government and politics, and was later promoted to a bachelor of adversaries, which can also be said to be a momentary scenery.
Before the outbreak of the Sino-French War in 1883, Zhang Peilun repeatedly played the song, advocating that the Qing court confront France and state in detail the reasons why the Qing army could win.
After the outbreak of the Sino-French War, Zhang Peilun was entrusted with a heavy responsibility to deal with the affairs of Fujian's maritime frontiers, but in the Sino-French War, due to the disparity in military strength between the two sides, coupled with the Qing government's opposition to Zhang Peilun blocking the mouth of the Minjiang River, resulting in French warships entering the Minjiang River, in the important Battle of Majiang, the Qing army was difficult to resist the French attack, and eventually almost the entire army was destroyed.
After the war, various forces in the DPRK and China impeached Zhang Peilun, and Zhang Peilun was also convicted and degraded, until 1888, after a gap of three years, Zhang Peilun was released and returned to Beijing. At this time, Zhang Peilun can not be said to be discouraged. His original wife died at an early age, and his step-house died of illness during his exile, and the undercurrents in the imperial court were turbulent, and Zhang Peilun was struggling. At this moment, Li Hongzhang threw an olive branch at him.
At this time, Li Hongzhang's kindness to Zhang Peilun was not only a gift of charcoal in the snow, he also insisted on "marrying" his daughter Li Jurong to Zhang Peilun as a continuation.
After understanding the relationship between Li Hongzhang and Zhang Peilun, it is not difficult for us to see that Zhang Peilun is a person with a martial strategy and is also one of Li Hongzhang's proud protégés.
Li Hongzhang cherishes talent, and not only cherishes talent, but also wants Zhang Peilun to use it for himself. As for whether her daughter will be happy after marrying her daughter, presumably Li Hongzhang has also considered it. After all, she rescued Zhang Peilun when he was down, and Li Jurong married Zhang Peilun, who was powerless and powerless at this time, and Zhang Peilun had no reason or courage to treat Li Jurong badly.
And the truth is just as Li Hongzhang expected. After marriage, Zhang Peilun loved Li Jurong very much, and the two often talked about poetry together, touching the piano and tasting tea, which can be described as raising eyebrows, qinser and ming, which were also passed down as a good story at that time. But the good times are not long, and the age difference in the 20s is doomed to the couple's inability to stay together.
Zhang Peilun, as a somewhat bloody reader, after hearing about the eight-nation alliance army attacking Dagukou in 1900, he was furious and his physical condition was deteriorating, and then more than a year after Li Hongzhang's death, he died of illness in Nanjing in 1903 at the age of fifty-six. At this time, Li Jurong was only thirty-seven years old. After the death of her husband, Li Jurong did not remarry until she contracted lung disease, and died in 1912 at the age of forty-six.
Although the marriage relationship between Li Juling and Zhang Peilun lasted only for a short period of more than ten years, they were in love and happy. It can also be said that under the feudal system of arranged marriages by parents and the low status of women, Li Jurong was quite lucky to meet her lover in marriage. So aside from Li Jurong's luck, what is the situation of a woman who is bound by the feudal marriage system?
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Cheng Zhu Lixue prevailed, the "three principles and five constants", "three from the four virtues" all strictly required women's behavior, and the Qing Dynasty was a dynasty with a very strict concept of chastity, and the requirements for women's chastity also reached an incomparable point.
For example, the "ZhenLie" chapter in the "Female Fan Jielu", which is one of the "Four Books of the Boudoir", it is written:
"Loyal subjects do not care about the two countries, and martyrs do not have two husbands." Therefore, one is tied to it, and it will not be moved for life. Men can be bigamy, and women are not suitable. It is therefore the feast of hardship and suffering that is called chastity, and the generous donation of life is called fierce. Order the woman to cut off her ears and nose to hold her body, and her wife to hold her arms and split her palms to mingzhi. ”
Under the shackles of this feudal ritual, women regarded it as a virtue to keep their husbands to the festival. The serious interference of public opinion in widows' remarriages slowly showed signs of relaxation after the Republic of China. And Li Jurong, who received a "good" education since childhood, should also insist on keeping the festival for her deceased husband in this bondage, have a relationship in her heart, and end up depressed.
Another important manifestation of the inferior status of women in the feudal system was the marriage system of monogamous and polygamous concubines. During the Tang and Song dynasties, in addition to "wife" and "concubine", there was also the name of "concubine", that is, the concubine system, which was generally a concubine who accompanied the wife, and the status was higher than that of the concubine.
In the feudal etiquette law, there is a very strict distinction between wives and concubines, theoretically concubines have no status in the feudal family, concubines cannot go to the temple, and their families cannot form a relationship with their husbands like the family of the right wife, and the inequality of this status is not only reflected in family life, but also in the laws of the feudal system - for example, in the Tang Law, the criminal responsibility of wives, wives, and concubines in law is different.
When Li Juling married Zhang Peilun, Zhang Peilun's first two wives had died, so Li Juling married Zhang Peilun as a regular wife, and the right wife enjoyed a relatively high status in the family, which was also one of the conditions for Li Hongzhang to marry his daughter to Zhang Peilun.
In addition to the oppression and destruction of women, feudal marriage also has a feature that everyone knows, that is, arranged marriages by parents. Children do not have the right and freedom to choose a spouse, and even the phenomenon of buying and selling marriages, child brides-in-law, and doll parents also exists in large numbers.
Just like Li Jurong's experience, a woman's marriage is all decided by her parents, Li Jurong does not have the right to choose, but as mentioned above, Li Jurong is lucky, leaving aside the pros and cons of identity and family reputation, Zhang Peilun loves her. But under such a dark feudal system, how many women have fallen victim to the family in marriage?
At the same time, in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, as a turbulent and changeable era, Chinese and Western civilizations had a strong collision during this period, which also led to a certain extent to a new understanding of marriage ethics under the traditional feudal system at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
First of all, it is the Christian ideas brought by Western missionaries that have a greater impact on the traditional marriage morality of China's feudal society. Although there was also a clear discrimination against women in early Christian doctrines, such as the existence of statements such as "women are the root of human sin".
But since the Enlightenment, Christian doctrine has also undergone tremendous changes, and the status of women has increased, and women have almost equal status with men. Therefore, the missionaries who came to China also propagated the idea of equality between men and women, advocated monogamy, criticized the feudal system's strict requirements for women's chastity, opposed arranged marriages, concubines and other ugly customs, and also attacked the behavior of foot binding and drowning of female babies that harmed women's health at that time.
Although the influence of the missionaries was limited, it also objectively promoted the reform of the Chinese marriage system and the re-examination of women's status in feudal society.
During this period, one of the important manifestations of Chinese influence on Western thought was the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement that broke out in 1851, and as the leader of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, Hong Xiuquan put forward the idea of equality between men and women.
Although the essential purpose of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement was not to truly achieve equality between men and women, it objectively did impact the ethical norms of male superiority and female inferiority in feudal traditional thinking, and its proposed laws and regulations such as equality between men and women, equal education between men and women, allowing women to join the army, advocating freedom of marriage, advocating monogamy, supporting remarriage, and prohibiting foot binding all had a certain degree of emancipation effect on women in the territory of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and also to a large extent impacted the idea of discrimination against women in feudal society.
The women's movement in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was theoretically obscure, and in the end it failed to shake the foundations of feudal orthodoxy, but its unprecedented scale and large number of participants also provided theoretical and practical experience for the bourgeois reformists and revolutionaries thereafter.
Later, in the 1870s and 1890s, early reformist trends of capitalist reform also emerged in China. The early reformers also put forward the idea of equality between men and women, and the reformists linked the revival of women's studies and the prohibition of women's foot binding with the prosperity of the country and the strength of the people, believing that women's education was related to the rise and fall of the country and the harmony of the family, and that women's education was closely related to the education of their children.
These ideas were also further developed and implemented during the period of the Penghu Reform Law, and the first new women's school run by the Chinese, the "Jingzheng Girls' School", was also created during this period, which, as the first institution to conduct formal school education for women, opposed the feudal gender concept of "women's talentlessness is morality" from the practical level.
Let's go back to the protagonist of this article, Li Jurong, is she also influenced by this advanced idea? I think the answer is yes.
First of all, although Li Hongzhang was not a reformist, most of the important figures in the early restoration faction were talents recruited by Li Hongzhang for the foreign affairs movement, and Li Hongzhang always had a sympathetic and supportive attitude toward the restoration movement, because he himself was also seeking ways to change the law and make it stronger, so he accepted the ideas of the reformists to a certain extent.
The most obvious proof of his father's thoughts in Li Jurong is Li Hongzhang's attention and education to Li Jurong. Li Jurong received a good education from an early age, and her talent can sing and write poems with her talented husband Zhang Peilun, which shows her talent. From Li Julian, we can also see a ray of dawn of the change of the times.
Although Li Jurong could not decide her own marriage, she was happy in her marriage after being favored by her husband, while other women under the shackles of feudal etiquette were not as lucky as Li Jurong.
In this period at the end of the Qing Dynasty, although the influx of new ideas caused a certain degree of impact on the traditional idea of male superiority and female inferiority, history proved that neither feudal rule nor capitalist practice could fundamentally protect women's rights and interests. Women during this period continued to have a low status in the family, were severely persecuted physically and psychologically, and women's marriages were mostly victims of family rights.
bibliography:
Song Shu: "Six Character Lesson ZhaiBei Discussion and Kaihua Chapter", in Hu Zhusheng, ed., Song Shu Collection, vol. 1, Zhonghua Bookstore, 1993 edition
Sun Guiyan: A Study on Feminist Thought in the Late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, China Social Science Press
Gao Renli, "Li Hongzhang and the Early Reform School", in Journal of Social Sciences of Jilin University, No. 04, 1994
Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, vol. 411, Biography of Li Hongzhang
Zhao Erxun et al.: Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, Zhonghua Bookstore, 1998: vol. 444, 12455 pp. Biography of Zhang Peilun
Pu Bo: "Zhang Ailing's Grandfather Zhang Peilun: Poor Beijing Official Who Relied on His Grandmother's Dowry" see China News Network[Cited on 2015-05-17]