Original: Binye Hai
Is national hero Feng Zicai a Bobai?
Is there any strong evidence?
According to Zheng Shili, Feng Zicai (July 29, 1818 – September 18, 1903), also known as Nangan, was born in Shawei Village, Qinzhou, Lianzhou Prefecture, Guangdong (now part of Qinwei Village, Guangxi). Late Qing Dynasty anti-French general and national hero.
Feng Zicai's parents died at an early age, and he was exiled to the rivers and lakes, and later participated in the anti-Qing uprising of Liu Batiandihui in Bobai, and accepted zhao'an after failure. During the Xianfeng period, Xiang Rong and Zhang Guoliang suppressed the Taiping Army. He served as the viceroy of Guangxi and Guizhou. At the time of the Sino-French War, he was nearly seventy years old, and was appointed as the military deputy of Guangxi Guanwai, won the victory in the Battle of Zhennanguan, conquered Wenyuan and Langshan, and severely damaged the French commander Nigri, and the French army was annihilated by more than a thousand people, and the French prime minister Ruferi fell. He was appointed Viceroy of Yunnan. During the Sino-Japanese War, he was stationed in Zhenjiang, and the official was the viceroy of Guizhou, and the tired official was the prince Shaobao. Feng Zicai ruled the army for more than forty years, and the cold su was as usual.
In the twenty-ninth year of Guangxu (1903), Feng Zicai died of illness at the age of 85. After Feng Zicai died of illness and was buried in Qinzhou, the imperial court ordered the construction of the "Feng Yongyi Gong ancestral hall" in the southeast corner of Qinzhou City, called "Gong bao ancestral hall".
There is also such a record of Feng Zicai's childhood and adolescent experience, which is still written in great detail: "Feng Zicai in childhood lived a very difficult life. He lost his mother at the age of 4 and his father at the age of 10, and he was dependent on his grandmother and brother for his life, and he was lonely and miserable, and dropped out of school after only two months of schooling. In order to survive, the little Feng Zicai had to go with the adults to sell salt, do carpentry, fish and shrimp, escort the cattle gang, and after the fence house was washed away by the flood, he had to live in the temple, hungry and cold, and precarious. When Feng Zicai was 15 years old, his grandmother died. The desire to survive drove Feng Zicai, who was wandering on the street, to wield a sword and practice a good martial art. With this fist and foot kung fu, Feng Zicai put wooden rows and acted as bodyguards for people. ”
Because of Feng Zicai's important position in modern Chinese history, his ancestral home has also attracted much attention from the historical community. As the study of Feng Zicai becomes more and more in-depth, the question of Feng Zicai's ancestral origin is becoming more and more confusing and has become a mystery. Where Feng Zicai's ancestral home is very controversial.
One said it was the South China Sea of Guangdong
It is believed that Feng Zicai's ancestral home is in the South China Sea, mainly from two documents. One is the genealogy compiled by Feng Xiangzhao, the sixth son of Feng Zicai, in the thirty-third year of the Republic of China, and the other is the "Documentary of Feng Gongbao's Deeds" written by Feng Zicai's staff and literati before his death. The genealogy compiled by Feng Xiangzhao records: "Emperor Wuzong was a native of Nanhai County, and since his great-grandfather (Feng Zicai's grandfather) Guangyun moved to Shawei Village outside the East Gate of Qinzhou, his ancestral sect failed to be examined, and hereby take Gaozu Suiyun as his ancestor... After the interview in the hometown of the South China Sea, the interview is indeed true, and then the First Yuanzong Branch will be included. The "Documentary of Feng Gongbao's Deeds" also records: "Since the end of Qianlong, the Gong Ancestors moved from the South China Sea to qinzhou..."
Feng Zicai also presided over the compilation of genealogies before his death, but unfortunately it was lost during the Japanese occupation of Qinzhou. Because the current family tree has not been well continued, there are many loopholes, especially the source of the ancestors is too simple to examine. In 2013, Professor Ji Zonglin of the Institute of Law of Guangdong Ocean University and Professor Zhang Zhuangqiang of the Academic Affairs Office of Guangxi Yulin Normal College wrote the "Examination of the Ancestral Home of National Heroes", which mainly said that "when the national hero Feng Zicai talked about his ancestral hometown in the late Qing Dynasty, he once said that it was Guangdong Nanhai, and later people visited the South China Sea, but there was no clue in the police station and the Feng surname, and there was very few local Feng surnames, and even people surnamed Feng said that "they have not heard of Feng Zicai this person", which cannot prove that Feng Zicai's ancestral hometown is Guangdong Nanhai.
In addition, Guan Tianfeng Zicai's birth mother said. Feng Zicai's sixth son, Feng Xiangzhao, presided over the revision of the Qinzhou "Feng Clan Genealogy" in which Feng Zicai's mother, Huang Shi, died in the first year of Daoguang. The Huang clan is Feng Zicai's father, the Quality Nunnery, that is, Feng Zicai's mother, and Feng Zicai's biological mother died in the first year of Xianfeng, and was not on the original genealogy due to her humble status (Li Feng; Feng Zicai's biological mother problem preliminary examination; Journal of Qinzhou University; Issue 11, 2018)
The second is Zhanjiang, Guangdong
Zhanjiang folk historian Luo Guohe said: Guangxi Qinzhou anti-french famous general Feng Zicai may be a native of Yau Ma Yuan Village, Longtou Town, Zhanjiang, Guangdong, Feng Zicai's father was engaged in water transportation, at that time the Jianjiang River water system can pass through the north of Guangxi, Bobai, Feng Zicai sometimes followed his father to the Bobai area. Almost everyone in the village knows that the village has produced a national hero who fought the French yankees, that is, Feng Zicai, a famous general of the Qing Dynasty. His ancestral house, in Wuguiyuan, collapsed during the Cultural Revolution and is now razed to the ground. To Teacher Luo's surprise, the old people in the village all knew that Feng Zicai's name in his hometown was "Feng Guanbao". This name is not mentioned in all the canonical history books, but in an article "Feng Zicai Knows The Side Affairs" in a Qing Dynasty wild history "Qing Barnyard Bills", the name of Feng Zicai mentioned is Feng Guanbao. Now there is a saying of "Feng Gongbao" on the Internet, because he was once the "Prince Shaobao", but it is not the milk name of "Feng Guanbao".
The old man in the village said that Feng Zicai actually lived in the village until he was seventeen or eighteen years old, but then something happened that made him leave his hometown and never come back. Here's how it happened — he was a righteous man, made friends, and met a lot of "sand cooker brothers." One year, a few friends went to his hometown with him to play, and at that time, there was a plague, and some of the friends fell ill, had no money to buy medicine, and did not know what to do for a while.
Feng Zicai saw that there was a rich man who raised a lot of pigs, and he germinated the idea of stealing pigs to raise money for treatment. Feng Zicai was caught and tied up by the Five Flowers to go to the village, which was a punishment for the ugly ancestors of the Emperor at that time.
When his father heard the news, he rushed home, was furious, beat Feng Zicai in front of the clan, and announced that he had broken away from the father-son relationship and let the village rules fall. Feng Zicai has never stolen usually, and as a teenager, he only made this decision to save his friends, and he had repented, but he did not feel the warmth of home here in his father, and his self-esteem was greatly hurt.
Therefore, Feng Zicai escaped over the wall on a dark and windy night in a month and went straight to Bobai, Guangxi. After that, the historical records record that he defected to the Heaven and Earth Society led by Liu Ba. Later, this branch of the world would be recruited by the imperial court, and Feng Zicai fought bravely in the army, had courage and strategy, was promoted many times, and settled in Qinzhou, and later became the viceroy of Guangxi as an official.
The third is to say Guangxi Bobai
Guangxi Bobai said that there is sufficient iron evidence: First, the mystery of Feng Zicai's birth mother, and evidence is found in Bobai. Second, Feng Zicai started in Bobai, joined Liu Ba's rebellion, surrendered to You Changling of Zhixian After defeat, and after making meritorious contributions, he entered Jiangnan with the Qing army of Xiang Rong, the viceroy of Guangxi, to suppress the Taiping Army. The history books are contained. The second is that Feng Zicai wandered in Bobai when he was a child, learned a kung fu, where did kung fu come from, and found evidence in Bobai. The third is the Bobai Feng Clan Ancestral Hall, which was built with the full support of Feng Zicai, and has genealogical records and Feng Xiujuan, a descendant of Feng Zicai. Fourth, the Feng clan genealogy in different places in Bobai has a record of Feng Zicai, Feng Xiujuan has only seen part of it, not seen the Yong'an Big Car Ping, this evidence can prove that Feng Zicai was adopted by the kung fu head Feng Jinxin (octagonal five) to teach kung fu. Sixth, in Qinzhou, an ancestral tomb of Feng Ziqing who moved from Bobai in 1882 was found. Seventh, in Bobai, there are many stories of Feng Zicai playing ghosts, and there are Chen Guocai and other scholars who have specially collected the stories of Feng Zicai. Eighth, there are former residences in Dongu Datang Lion Head Tun and Yong'an Xinxiang Dacheping.
Feng Xiujuan, a descendant of Feng Zicai, went like this in the process of Bobai's examination:
At the end of June 2005, an old mud brick house in Shizitoutun, Datang Village, Dungu Town, Bobai County, was poured down by heavy rain. Villagers cleared out a dilapidated and yellowed copy of the Feng Family Genealogy in the collapsed houses, which was revised in the early years of the Republic of China and recorded a brief history of Feng Zicai's ancestors. To this end, bobai feng clan relatives once again went to Qinzhou to find Feng Xiujuan. This clue eventually made Feng Xiujuan decide to embark on a journey to find her roots and personally go to Bobai and the South China Sea to investigate and collect evidence. According to this old yellowed Feng family tree, Feng Zicai had a brother Feng Zilong, father Feng Guiting, grandfather Feng Qikun, great-grandfather Feng Yiyun, and Feng Zicai's biological mother Cai Shi buried in a mountain range called Flying Centipede. The feng zicai family tree compiled by Feng Xiangzhao records that Feng Zicai has a brother Feng Ziqing, a father Feng Wengui, a grandfather Feng Qiling, and a great-grandfather Feng Suiyun. This made Feng Xiujuan very happy, although there were differences between the two genealogies, the names and ranks of the people were the same, which she had never seen before.
Less than 10 kilometers north from the lion's head, in the village of Kemu in Luzhu Town (now merged into Bobai Town) in Bobai County, Feng Zongcai, who lives here, said that the genealogy unearthed in Dungu is consistent with the relevant content recorded in the genealogy they have compiled in recent years, and it is from the village that Feng Zicai's ancestors who live in lion's head have moved out of the village. On July 9, Feng Xiujuan and her party arrived in Bobai, successively arrived at zhaili and lion's head, worshiped Cai's tomb, and visited the former residence of Feng Zicai's ancestors. In Bobai, Feng Xiujuan heard a lot of stories and legends about Feng Zicai. One of them is roughly like this: when Feng Zicai first joined the Qing army, he was delivering food to the front line "fire head army". As long as he delivers food, the battle can be won, and if he does not send food, the battle will be lost. Later, the generals of the Qing army asked Feng Zicai to lead the troops to the battle, and every battle would be won. Another said that when Feng Zicai was 4 years old, his mother Cai Shi went up the mountain to dig bamboo shoots, and on the way home, she fell ill and died of flying centipede ridge, and was buried by ants. The story of Feng Zicai circulating among the Bobai Feng clan relatives was unexpected by Feng Xiujuan. In Bobai, Feng Xiujuan also observed the Feng Ancestral Hall, which was built in the county seat of Bobai County in the xianfeng Bingchen year of the Qing Dynasty (1856), which reminded her of another story. Feng Xiujuan, 72, recalls that when she was 13 years old, her father and uncle drank together and talked about the story of Bo bai people who donated money to Feng Zicai to build a ancestral shrine during the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty. At that time, Feng Zicai had just been promoted to a staff general for military merit in Nanjing, and was awarded a gold medal for military merit. Several members of the Bobai Feng clan traveled thousands of miles to find Feng Zicai and asked for donations to support the construction of the Bobai "Feng Ancestral Hall", and Feng Zicai planned to donate the gold medal of military merit. However, as soon as the generals heard that they were going to donate the meritorious gold medals of everyone's conquest on the battlefield to the Bobai Feng clan, they were very anxious, so they donated money one after another and put together six or seven hundred taels of silver. Feng Xiujuan wondered in her heart: If the great-grandfather and Bo Bai were not related, how could they be so generous? Today, the Bobai Feng clan has converted the ancestral hall funded by Feng Zicai into the "National Hero Feng Zicai Memorial Hall" and is applying to become a patriotic education base for young people.
In a village called ChongMeng, Feng Xiujuan also saw for the first time that the Feng clan here had been worshipping the clay sculptures of Feng Zicai. After traveling around and repeatedly comparing the genealogy, Feng Xiujuan believes that the Feng family tree compiled and printed in the early years of the Republic of China is true and detailed, and the life years of Feng Zicai's ancestors, Feng Zicai himself and Feng Zicai's next generation basically coincide, and Feng Zicai's great-grandfather should have died in Bobai, and then it can be determined that Feng Zicai's ancestral home is indeed Bobai. As for the discrepancies in the family tree, especially the genealogy mentions that Feng Zicai's birth mother Cai Shi was buried in Bobai Feitian Centipede Ridge, and Qinzhou has Feng Zicai's mother Huang Shiyi, she analyzed that Feng Zicai may have two mothers, a birth mother, and a stepmother.
Feng Xiujuan wrote in her notebook: The family flow of our son Caigong is from Fujian, the first stop is Guangxi Bobai, the second stop is Guangdong Nanhai, and the third stop is Guangdong Qinzhou (present-day Qinzhou, Guangxi), and the ancestral home should be Guangxi Bobai. The return of the South China Sea further confirmed that Feng Zicai's ancestral home was in Bobai.
Feng Xiujuan was excited by Bo Bai's trip, but she still had worries: how to explain the ancestral home of Shatouwei in Nanhai, Guangdong, recorded in the Qinzhou family tree? Since the descendants of Feng Zicai's relatives had never traveled to the South China Sea to learn about their ancestral homeland, for the sake of prudence, from July 13 to 14, Feng Xiujuan and her party launched an investigation and evidence collection in the South China Sea, Guangdong. However, she did not find any clues related to Feng Zicai in the South China Sea. In Shatou Town, Nanhai District, Foshan City, Feng Xiujuan, under the leadership of the local police station, visited all the Feng's ancestral residences here, especially visiting the educated elderly. According to the local Feng people, the 7 administrative villages under the jurisdiction of Shatou Town, including Beicun, Langxing, Shuinan, Luoke and Shangen, all have 100 to 200 Feng surnames, but none of them have heard the stories and legends of Feng Zicai. Only those who have read books know that there is a historical figure named Feng Zicai in middle school textbooks. Feng Kun, an old man in Luoke Village, said that he knew that Feng Zicai's anti-French hero was the commanding general of the Zhennanguan Great Victory, but he had not heard that he was from our place. Feng Xiujuan consulted the genealogical and literary and historical materials provided by the local people, but did not find any valuable clues. Deng Yaoxin, the head of Fangzhi's office in Shatou Town, also told Feng Xiujuan that they knew Feng Zicai, but there was no record that he was from Shatou Town.
The trip to the South China Sea convinced Feng Xiujuan that in Nanhai, Guangdong Province, it was only a temporary residence for Feng Zicai's grandfather Feng Guangyun to do maritime transportation business, and Feng Zicai's ancestors did not stay in the local area for long. This also made Feng Xiujuan more certain that Feng Zicai's ancestral home was Guangxi Bobai.
On July 15, Feng Xiujuan returned to Bobai from the South China Sea and continued to dig deeper into more valuable information along existing clues. On the 23rd, she returned to Qinzhou from Bobai with rich audio- and written materials. She said that Feng Zicai's ancestral home of Bobai has been confirmed, and the next step will be to comprehensively compare the organizational strength with the Feng clan genealogy in various parts of Bobai, and strive to sort out the accurate lineage table of the Feng Zicai family. At that time, Feng Zicai's ancestral maze will have a more scientific and complete conclusion.
As for the genealogy of Dacheping in Xinxiang Village, Yong'an Town, it is clearly recorded that Feng Zicai is the adopted son of The Kung Fu Head Feng Jinxin (Octagonal Ear), 45-year-old Feng Jinxin met the 15-year-old stray child Feng Zicai, saw that he was sensitive and studious, brought back Dacheping (Xinxiang collectively known as Huangshashui), lived for seven or eight years, and taught Kung Fu with his adoptive father at the Feng Ancestral Hall in the county town, during which he also participated in the construction of the ancestral hall of Dacheping Village. The house where Feng Zicun lived was on the left side of the Ancestral Hall. After his failure to participate in the Heaven and Earth Society, the people on the big car apron were afraid that they would basically go empty. When Feng Zicai besieged the Taiping Army in Jiangnan, he also donated to build the Bobai Feng Clan Ancestral Hall, and the family tree is also recorded. This is consistent with Feng Xiuzhen's donation of money to build the Bai Feng Ancestral Hall. At the same time, people who had fled from the big car platform came back one after another to settle down.
In 2013, Professor Ji Zonglin of the Institute of Law of Guangdong Ocean University and Zhang Zhuangqiang, professor of the Academic Affairs Office of Guangxi Yulin Normal College, wrote the "Examination of the Ancestral Origin of National Heroes", which mainly said: "When talking about his ancestral hometown in the late Qing Dynasty, Feng Zicai once said that it was The South China Sea in Guangdong, and later generations visited the South China Sea, but there was no clue, on the contrary, in the genealogy of the Bobai Feng clan in Guangxi, there is a record of Feng Zicai's ancestors, according to which it can be affirmed that Feng Zicai's ancestral home is in Bobai, Guangxi." Feng Zicai's reluctance to admit this may have something to do with the fact that he wanted to conceal the history of his youth in Guangxi Bobai's participation in the anti-Qing significance and thus his fear and ridicule under the rule of the Qing government. ”
Feng Zicai's superior, Zhang Guoliang, the number one fierce general in the Jiangnan camp of the Qing Army, worked hard and made great achievements, but because he was born in the Heaven and Earth Society like Feng Zicai, he was suppressed by the court. In addition, the Qing court had an edict that the ancestral graves of the anti-thief leaders would be excavated and their dragon veins cut off. Does Feng Zicai dare to think that the real hometown involves ancestors and relatives?
Dacheping has always been said to have moved the tomb of his righteous father Feng Jinxin to Qinzhou, and there is still an empty cemetery of Feng Jinxin on the mountain. Recently, feng zicai feng ziqing's ancestral tomb that feng ziqing moved from Bobai in 1882 was finally found in Qinzhou, which was the tomb of Feng Jinxin. This is strong evidence. More on that below. At least it can fully prove the historical fact that Feng Zicai walked out of the Yong'an Big Car Ping after he was adopted. As for whether Feng Zicai's ancestral home is Bobai, with the discovery of new iron evidence, it will surely unveil the veil of history.
Bin Yehai, male, born in September 1966, is currently the vice chairman of the Guangxi Bobai County Literary Association. In 1985, he began to work, successively engaged in teachers, journalists, civil servants and other professions, amateur writing, novels scattered in "Guangxi Literature", "Yangcheng Evening News", "Hongdou", "Literature Monthly" (Hong Kong), "Foshan Literature and Art", "Small Novel Monthly", "Jintian", "Migrant Workers" and other newspapers and periodicals. Short and medium stories have twice won the "Harmony Literature Award" of Yulin Municipal Government, several novels have won the National Novel Essay Excellence Award, and several novels have been included in relevant novel collections.