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A thousand people sit on the stone, half of the Qing Dynasty and half of the Ming.
Message to Lou Dongwu Bachelor, two dynasties tianzi and one courtier.
Legend has it that this is a poem written by a young man to the famous poet Wu Meicun in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, full of insults and disdain. Wu Meicun is very famous, Meicun is his name, named Wu Weiye, zi Jungong, Jiangsu Taicang people, Chongzhen Jinshi, together with Qian Qianyi, Gong Dingxiao and called "Jiang Zuo Sanjia", but also the founder of the Loudong poetry school.
The background of this poem is interesting. After the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, many readers adhered to the "integrity" and did not surrender. The Kangxi Emperor was very clever, and he used temptation to disintegrate those readers who did not want to surrender from within, so in the imperial examination, he specially opened a "erudite hongzi section" for those who did not want to surrender, as long as they applied for a name and took a formal examination, they gave him a very good official position. This is a test of the reader's ability to resist temptation, and sure enough, many readers have obtained official positions through the "Erudite Hongzi Section". Some people who watched and saw that the first batch of "erudite people" had very good official positions, and they couldn't help but regret it. Therefore, the Kangxi Emperor opened a second "Erudite Hongzi Branch" to collect the first unaccounted for. Through this trick, the Kangxi Emperor got the readers done. It seems that Chinese exquisite discipline, and it is really difficult to keep it. I heard that there are more people going for the second time, so that there is no place in the examination room, and after going, you can only sit outside the examination room door.
However, there are still some who insist on not surrendering. These people wrote poems to satirize them, such as "a team of Yi Qi went down to Shouyang, and for several years it was desolate." Knowing that Wei Fern will eventually be difficult to satisfy, repenting of the Unprovoked Advice to the King of Wu", and "losing control of Yi Qi under the first yang, the courtyard door is even more desolate." From now on, the plan is to return to the mountain, and Wei Fern has eaten it all."
Emperor Ming Chongzhen was quite good to Wu Meicun, who at first may have been embarrassed to surrender, and then found an excuse that the Qing government had kidnapped his old mother and threatened him, forcing him to finally have no choice but to bow to the Qing government, for which he also wrote a poem in a false way: "Fusheng owes only one death, and the earthly world has no reason to know nine." Because Wu Meicun's fame is indeed very large, it is said that when he left for Beijing to take up his post, there was a so-called "Thousand People Society" for him. A young man, who did not attend the assembly, wrote the poem at the beginning of this article and sent it to the banquet. This poem is a shadow of his life's pain.
Although the Qing government treated these surrendered readers very well, when writing history later, they included Wu Meicun in the "Biography of the Second Minister". According to the spirit of Chinese culture, this is very serious, nailed to the pillar of shame, and always laughed at.
According to historical records, anyone can surrender, but Wu Meicun cannot surrender, because the Chongzhen Emperor's favor to him is too heavy. The young Wu Meicun passed the township examination and the meeting test, successfully advanced to the title of the golden list of the temple examination, and thus entered the door of Zhou Yanru. In the year that Wu Meicun participated in the temple examination, because the second assistant Wen Tiren and Zhou Yanru were political enemies, Wen Tiren falsely accused Wu Meicun of cheating. Wen Tiren said that Zhou Yanru was a fellow examiner of the same year, Li Mingrui, who had been a teacher in Wumei Village. Therefore, Wen Tiren falsely accused Wu Meicun of favoritism and fraud. According to common sense, the emperor would most likely cancel wu meicun's meritorious name in order to avoid suspicion. However, the Chongzhen Emperor only gave Wen Tiren an eight-character reply: "Zhengda Boya, Foot Style Tricky", which is tantamount to personally guaranteeing the authenticity of Wu Meicun's meritorious name. After entering the dynasty as an official, Wu Meicun received special care from the Chongzhen Emperor. For example, in the Zodiac Week incident, all the officials who stood on the side of the Zodiac Week to help him speak were punished, and Wu Meicun was spared. In the twelfth year of Chongzhen, Wu Meicun was seriously ill, and the Chongzhen Emperor, instead of idleness in his position, promoted him to the post of Guozi Supervisor, and the key was to be able to work in Nanjing, which was closer to his hometown. It was in Jinling that Wu Meicun became acquainted with Qian Qianyi, Mao Peijiang, and other elegant people, and met Kou Baimen, Dong Xiaowan, Bian Yujing and other famous prostitutes in Qinhuai, and also left famous poems.
When dynastic orthodoxy was overthrown, it was the most test of literary popularity and character, even if such officials were not favored by the kind of Wu Meicun. At that time, many Ming ministers around Wu Meicun refused to surrender to the Manchu Qing, and they either led an armed uprising of backbone civilians or simply committed suicide and martyrdom. For example, Chen Zilong, Wu Ciwei, and others launched the War of Restoration and martyred the country with their bodies; Yang Tingshu ning died and committed suicide; Fang Yizhi and Chen Zhenhui insisted on calling Ming ming and not doing it for life. What's more, the Chongzhen Emperor placed a lot of money on Wu Meicun, so Wu Meicun's choice is very worthy of people's attention. However, Wu Meicun did not summon up the courage to sacrifice his life for the country, which is very humiliating.
What is even more shameful is that when Wang Hanguo, a good friend of Wu Meicun, came to visit the door and hoped that Wu Meicun could escape into the empty door with himself, Wu Meicun rejected the proposal on the grounds that his family was involved. Wu Meicun then hid in his hometown of Taicang, living in a lingering fear, only hating himself for not being born at the right time. Such integrity and integrity may be the first reason for Wu Meicun's surrender to the Manchu Qing, and it is no wonder that Wu Meicun is included in the "Biography of the Second Minister".
Wu Meicun may not have had the intention of resisting the Qing court's temptation and confusion from the bone. The Manchu Qing dynasty had just entered the Central Plains, and most of the Han literati scorned it. In order to eliminate the hidden dangers caused by the literati, the Qing court issued an edict to recruit reclusive people to become officials in the DPRK, and used a large amount of money to seduce well-known people in the south, hoping to change the literati's perception of the new dynasty through their influence and appeal, and eliminate the resistance of the masses. In particular, Wu Meicun is more representative, he is the Huiyuan of the late Ming Dynasty, and he is also the representative of the Qingliu ministers of the Ming Dynasty, and the majority of the relics are based on Wu Meicun as the spiritual leader, and the Qing government is quite concerned about the choice of Wu Meicun. Therefore, Ma Guozhu, the governor of Liangjiang, personally went to Wu Meicun's house with houjin and gave Wu Meicun a letter of appointment for "serving in the secretarial court". At this time, Wu Meicun was facing a dilemma, on the one hand, his heart was ecstatic, on the other hand, he was hindered by the "integrity" face, and he did not know how to choose. Therefore, Wu Meicun adopted the strategy of delaying the army, and very euphemistically used the excuse of physical illness as an excuse to make a pushback. Ma Guozhu listened to this reason given by Wu Meicun and thought that things could be done. Wu Meicun's attitude this time also foresaw the fact that he would soon be seduced by fame and fortune and become a courtier.
Before Wu Meicun went to the capital to take up his post, Hou Fangyu, one of the four princes of the late Ming Dynasty who had a good relationship with him, told him not to leave the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and analyzed three reasons: First, Wu Meicun was blessed by the former emperor and had a meritorious name; second, Wu Meicun was repeatedly promoted by shengshang and had an official position; finally, the official position given to Wu Meicun by the Qing court was not high, and it would affect the prestige of Wu Meicun.
After coming to the capital, as Hou Fangyu said, Wu Meicun found that the Qing court did not give him preferential treatment at all as promised earlier, but only asked him to compile the ancestral precepts of Nurhaci and Huang Taiji. Obviously, the treatment he received in the Qing court was far less favorable than in the Chongzhen period. Wu Meicun finally could not bear the huge psychological gap, and in the fourteenth year of Shunzhi, under the guise of taking care of his sick mother, he returned to his hometown. The Qing court did not keep him, and for the Qing court, Wu Meicun was dispensable. Perhaps, all the Qing court needed was for Wu Meicun to play a leading role in driving Jiangnan Shizi to submit to the Manchu Qing, as long as he was tricked into joining the imperial court, Wu Meicun would lose its use value.
I just don't know if when Wu Meicun entered Beijing to take up his post, did he remember the "Round Round Song" that he wrote when Wu Sangui brought the Qing army into the customs, "Dinghu abandoned the world on that day, broke the enemy and took the Beijing Yuguan." Weeping for the Six Armies, Chong Guan was angry and red-faced." This poem, Wu Sangui wanted to spend a lot of money to let him revise. At this time, Wu Meicun is not exactly Wu Sangui in the "Yuanyuan Qu" who disregards the righteousness of his family and country?
After returning to his hometown, Wumei Village experienced a huge blow. First the frail old mother died of illness, and then the daughter died. Immediately after, Wu Meicun was involved in a "song sales case". What particularly embarrassed Wu Meicun was the attitude of the literati towards him. In the past, when Wu Meicun did not serve as an official in the Qing Dynasty, the Jiangnan scribes regarded him as their leader and respected him. After Wu Meicun returned, the admirers of the early years now disdain to associate with him. As a result, when he was dying, he left such a sigh: "There is no moment that is not difficult, and there is no situation that does not taste hard."
In the tenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, on the occasion of his death, Wu Meicun expressed his infinite remorse for the apostasy, instructing his family not to prepare official clothes after his death, to bury him in a monk's robe, not to write the official positions of the Qing Dynasty on the tombstone, and at the same time, not to let others leave an epitaph for himself.
Some people say that if you want to write an epitaph, write the word "Second Minister", which may be the best portrayal of Wu Meicun's life.