This article is the exclusive original manuscript of Shi Shishi, and unauthorized reproduction/author Yao Youzhi is strictly prohibited
Li Zhen (李贽), courtesy name Zhuowu, was a famous thinker and philosopher who was active in the Ming Jiajing and Wanli dynasties. Mr. Huang Renyu gave Li Zhen a high evaluation in "Fifteen Years of Wanli", and at the same time made more people know Li Zhen. If we dig further into Li Zhen, you will find that in the Ming Dynasty nearly five hundred years ago, Li Zhen had long spanned the fields of literature, education, cultural exchange, and performance art, and could be described as the most famous cross-border master of the Ming Dynasty!
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the most influential literary figure of daming: Bole of Ming and Qing novels</h1>
There are countless ming dynasty literati and inkers, And Li Yan is not the most talented, not the most famous, not the most published, but definitely the most far-reaching!
Li Yan's most famous works are "Collecting Books" and "Burning Books", which contain his academic propositions, "The Theory of Children's Hearts", and openly declare war on rigid science and cannibalistic etiquette as a "heretic". Li Yan's books can be described as shocking, contain amazing magic, and are loved by the majority of readers. Li Zhen's books were burned twice during the Ming Dynasty's Wanli and Tianqi years, and were listed as banned books in the Qing Dynasty. But despite being burned and banned, Li's books were still widely circulated, and even spread overseas.
In the middle and late Wanli Dynasty, Li Zhen was already a de facto spiritual leader in the ideological circles, and there were many supporters, the most famous of whom were the three brothers of Yuan Hongdao, who were praised as the "Three Yuans of Public Security", who were actually disciples of Li Zhen. The Yuan brothers advocate "exclusive lyrical spirit", and the academic core "sexual spirit theory" is to inherit Li Zhen's "childlike heart theory", which can be described as a fan of Li Zhen's ashes! Tang Xianzu, a famous dramatist of the Ming Dynasty, further developed Li Zhen's "truth" as "true feelings", and praised true feelings in the famous drama "Peony Pavilion", leaving a famous drama text of "love does not know what it is, it goes deep, the living can die, and the dead can live"! Gong Zizhen, the giant of the literary school at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the modern era, and Hu Shi of the New Culture Movement, these literary giants were deeply influenced by Li Zhen.
There are generations of literature, such as the pre-Qin Dynasty has a hundred sons and hundreds of families, the two Han Dynasties have a Literary Endowment, the Sheng Tang Dynasty has poetry, the Two Song Dynasties have Song Words, the Yuan Dynasty has a Yuan Qu, and the literary peak of the Ming and Qing Dynasties is a novel. However, since the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the literary circle has gradually become popular in the "Tai Ge style" of mannerism and gorgeous rhetoric, and the Novel of the Ming Dynasty has not been further developed, but has been ridiculed as street stall literature! At this time, Li Yan came out of nowhere, proposing that only books that contain a sense of truth and reality are good books, and only what ordinary people like is good literature, and strive to elevate the low-status Ming and Qing novels into mainstream literature.
Li Yan commented on "Water Margin", pointing out that the whole book clearly writes "Water Margin One Hundred and Eight Generals", and the word "Zhongyi" is actually written, which is "ancient and modern to the text", and it is also the first class of good books under the heavens! After Li Zhen, countless Ming and Qing scholars continued his legacy, such as Jin Sheng's comment on "Journey to the West", Mao Zonggang's comment on "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and Rouge Zhai's comment on "Dream of the Red Chamber". Since then, the novel is no longer a street stall literature, and gradually becomes the literary protagonist of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The novel is greatly welcomed by readers in today's society, and its development situation is still in the ascendant. Li Zhen, a person who does not write novels, can be said to have achieved the rice bowl of countless novel writers over the past few hundred years!
As a literary scholar, the most valuable thing about Li Yan is not the gorgeous poetry, but the ideas contained in the articles, which are inherited by future generations.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Daming's gold medal special teacher: an educator four hundred years ahead</h1>
In addition to more than 20 years of official career, Li Yan took teaching as his daily career and regarded it as a lifelong struggle, truly comprehending the true meaning of "preaching and teaching karma to solve puzzles"!
In ancient China, if we talk about teaching and educating people, the first priority is of course Confucius, the grandfather of the teaching profession, but Confucius still has shortcomings such as inequality between men and women, discrimination against agriculture, etc. As a result, countless Chinese people who are now influenced by Western science have stood up in the team of Western education and shouted that Chinese education has gone astray in ancient times! But I didn't know that in the Ming Dynasty four hundred years ago, there was already an old gentleman named Li Zhuowu, who devoted his life to civilian education, gender equality, happiness education and many other aspects, and his advanced education concept had long been four centuries ahead of the West, but the Chinese people had not been able to inherit it!
The purpose of education is to cultivate talents, what is a real talent? Li Zhen criticized those who immersed themselves in the eight strands of articles and only read for the sake of being officials as "book slaves"; only those who had knowledge, talent, and courage at the same time, that is, readers with rich knowledge, strong hands-on ability, and outstanding courage, were the talents that Daming really needed, and the typical representatives were Yu Qian, Hai Rui, and Wang Yangming. Mr. Li Yan's talent standard is not generally high, but he is insightful.
Li Yan is a unique teacher who calls for creating a relaxed and free educational environment for students and advocating independent thinking. He advocated that students naturally have personality differences, so it is necessary to teach according to their aptitudes and individuals, give full play to the personality and talent of students, and all walks of life can make great careers, and do not have to take the imperial examination as the only choice.
In ancient times, men were inferior to women, advocating that "women without talent are virtuous", and schools did not allow women to enroll at all. However, Li Yan believed that men and women were born equal, and women should enjoy the same right to education, and they accepted female disciples for the first time in history, setting a precedent for women to enroll in school in ancient times, so that countless Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochao had the opportunity to read and write!
As a famous anti-feudal fighter, Li Yan did not teach the Four Books and Five Classics, did not teach the Three Principles and Five Constants, and did not teach the imperial examination, so what content was taught? Li Yan taught the students the unique "childlike theory", advocating the maintenance of sincerity, and learning in daily life only for the sake of seeking a "true" word; abandoning the false Taoist "existence of heavenly reason, going to human desires", talking about "dressing and eating is human physics", closely linking obscure Confucian learning with the daily life of the people, and talking about the best learning only to meet the selfish desires and basic needs of ordinary people!
Li Zhen's lifelong lectures, starting with the straightforward and understandable daily life of the people, gradually rose to the philosophical height of anti-asceticism and anti-theory, deeply fit the inner world of the people, and were warmly welcomed by young scholars and ordinary people. Whenever Li Yan gave a lecture, the audience was overcrowded, and everyone was fascinated, and as many as thousands of people took Li Zhen as a star-chasing idol. Li Yan's lectures caused a great sensation at that time, and today, he is at least a national treasure-level gold medal special teacher.
As a disciple of the Taizhou School for three generations, Li Yan inherited the advantages of Wang Geng's lectures, and the target of teaching was not only young scholars, but mainly ordinary people such as merchants, peddlers, and farmers, and successfully delegated the elite education of Confucius's scholar-doctor class to the civilian education of ordinary people. The common people outside the sight of ancient education, that is, "fools and foolish women", in the eyes of Li Zhen, are the most important bricks and tiles of the country, do not abandon, do not give up, every citizen can receive high-quality education, from education to the people are strong, the people are strong and the country is strong, and its "people-oriented" thinking has always been enshrined by educators in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China!
In the Ming Dynasty at that time, Li Zhen's educational ideas were undoubtedly deviant and criticized by the Apologists, but they took root in countless small countries in the West. Britain, France, Germany and other European powers unceremoniously "took" Li Zhen's educational ideas as early as hundreds of years ago, and achieved great success! As long as every citizen is made to become a talent as much as possible through education, why worry that there is no talent available, why worry that society has no cohesion, why worry that the country is not strong? This is probably the educational success of the European powers, and it is also the most valuable place of Li Zhen's thought!
< H1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > ambassador for cultural exchange: I just have a little more courage than others</h1>
The two six meetings between Li Zhen and the missionary Matteo Ricci represent a great collision and exchange between Chinese and Western cultures, and Li Zhen is worthy of being an ambassador of cross-border cultural exchanges!
Matteo Ricci's encounter in Daming once again verified: everything cannot escape the law of true incense! Father Matteo Ricci from Italy was a famous Jesuit missionary and a scientist in the Western humanities and natural sciences. Matteo Ricci traveled thousands of miles across the ocean to Daming, and woke up the late Ming Dynasty with unique scientific equipment such as diorahs, chiming bells, and world maps as rare stepping stones. This time, the late Ming Dynasty doctor was still intoxicated in the dream of the heavenly kingdom, on the one hand, attacking and insulting the Western political, economic, legal and other humanities as fallacies; on the other hand, he classified the Natural Sciences such as Physics, Chemistry, and Mapping in the West as strange tricks and tricks. However, unable to resist the Wanli Emperor's love for Western things such as self-chiming bells, pianos, telescopes, prisms, and "Kunyu Wanguo Quantu", many scholars began to carry forward the "take-ism", but did not dare to "risk the risk of passing through foreign ministers".
As a famous "heretic" at that time, Li Yan would not care about the criticism of the world and bravely extended a helping hand to Matteo Ricci, who was like a plague. Li Zhen ridiculed Matteo Ricci as a person with a thick appearance and a clever heart; Matteo Ricci praised Li Zhen for his pure heart and was a rare free reader; Li Zhen talked a lot about "childlike heart theory" and wrote the poem "Gift to Li Xitai"; Matteo Ricci spoke freely about Western science and gave back the "Theory of Friendship"; Li Zhen was not informal, the three religions of Confucianism and Taoism were integrated, and at the same time absorbed the Western concepts of "everyone is equal", and Matteo Ricci sincerely thanked Li Zhen for his matchmaking, so that he later visited the emperor and later Xu Guangqi translated the "Geometric Original".
Li Zhen was praised as a giant Confucian of the late Ming Dynasty, and Matteo Ricci was in charge of Western science, and their exchanges benefited each of them a lot: Li Zhen, through Matteo Ricci, saw the rise of Western science, saw equality and progress; through Li Zhen, saw the outstanding people of The Chinese people, and saw the splendid Huazhang!
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > performance artist: Who doesn't have a point art cell yet? </h1>
In the 276th year of the Ming Dynasty, the literati and inkers were like stars, among which alternative performance artists abounded: such as Tang Bohu, a talented man who ran naked in the streets, and Huafu lit Autumn Incense; Xu Wei, after the failure of the anti-Wu Dynasty, committed suicide nine times in insane; Yang Shen, one of the three official talents of the Ming Dynasty, took the anger of Emperor Jiajing as a daily check-in punch, and Li Zhen was a Daming performance artist with great Wei and Jin demeanor.
The Ming Dynasty was a society linked by clans, and etiquette had a great constraint on the first scholar in the imperial examination: whether the official position was as low as a county magistrate, or a prominent person such as the head of the cabinet of the dynasty, he had to unconditionally receive clan members and selflessly dedicate himself to the clan. Li Yan came from a shabby sea merchant family, and in the first half of his life, whether he was teaching or becoming an official, his main purpose was to feed the clan of more than a hundred mouths. But Li Zhenping did not like to be disciplined the most in his life, and hated to be bound. In order to get rid of the shackles of the clan and pursue freedom, Li Yan did not hesitate to resign from the government and shave his family, claiming that he was cool in the summer, which was really arrogant to the extreme, and deviant to the extreme!
But Li Zhen was by no means a false monk, a serious monk with official degrees. Although Li Yan became a monk, he cultivated his beard with his heart, only laughing so that he could stroke his beard handsomely; he talked a lot about Buddhism and Zen machines, but he did not abide by the rules and precepts, and took pleasure in drinking and eating meat; he knocked wooden fish in the Buddhist hall but hung the statue of Confucius; as a disciple of Taizhou, he attacked Confucianism!
Li Yan mocked the false Taoism of The Taoists, claiming that he would rather spend time with Ge Ji than meet a hypocrite full of benevolence and morality. Ignoring criticism, Li Yan accepted widowed women as female disciples, advocating that men and women were born equal, and these realms were several realms higher than Jia Baoyu and the like! Li Yan extremely hated the cannibalistic teaching that "starvation is small, and loss of temperance is big", attacked the vice of forcing widows to keep the festival and no longer marry, advocated that women were born to enjoy the freedom of marriage and education, and pointed out that exchanging women's lifelong happiness for a chastity arch is the greatest persecution of women!
Li Yan's alternative performance art greatly annoyed the scholars in the imperial court, and the officials did not hesitate to curse Li Zhen for taking sides. It is a pity that Li Zhuowu is a master of cursing people, and the imperial history and yanguan who are the best at cursing people can't scold this Quanzhou person! In 1602, the Wanli Emperor personally went down and imprisoned Li Zhen for the crime of "daring to advocate chaos and deceive the world and slander the people". After being imprisoned, Li Yan refused to admit to the false accusations, and he had the momentum to sit on the bottom of the prison. At this time, Li Zhen's protégés were all over the world, and there were thousands of admirers, just sitting idle, perhaps rescued from prison by friends. However, the old naughty boy who had been extremely disappointed in the world was not partial, and Li Yan broke himself with a razor in prison, leaving the world forever, ending a tragic and endless life!
Before his death, Li Yan was a very unique alternative, heretical, and crazy person, but when he died, he was extremely tragic and dashing, and he was a well-deserved performance artist.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
Li Yan has cross-border identities such as a writer, an education master, a cultural exchange ambassador, and a performance artist, which is only the external manifestation of "heresy", an alternative behavior that Li Yan has no choice but to do, and to attract like-minded people to rebel against the injustice and darkness of the world.
Li Zhen, a fighter who suffered a lot, was misunderstood and separated by the old wife who accompanied him all his life, hated by the profit-hungry clan, burned down the monastery by the defenders, expelled from Macheng, attacked and accused by his former best friend Geng, and was imprisoned and killed by the Wanli Emperor in anger. Li Zhen is an old naughty boy with a childlike heart, a good teacher who really has no class of teaching, a benevolent person who "bears the stigma of this body and saves the sky with his heart", and is a reader who takes it as his duty to save the country from danger and transform society!
References: 1. Huang Renyu's "Fifteen Years of the Wanli Calendar"
2. The History of Ming, vol. 221, "The Biography of Geng Xiang"
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