Qian Qianyi was a literary leader in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and his learning and conduct were not proportional to his personality, and his learning was very high and his character was not good. Using the "exquisite egoist" proposed by Professor Qian Liqun of the Department of Chinese of Peking University to evaluate his ancestors, it seems to be quite accurate, which means that people like him have a high IQ and a high taste in life, but they are very secular and sophisticated, good at making a scene, and the standard and principle of acting as a person is "self-interest", in order to achieve personal interests, they can do whatever it takes.
Qian Qianyi was born during the Wanli Dynasty, his hometown is today's Zhangjiagang, he was smart and studious from an early age, and at the age of 29, he was the third place in the palace examination presided over by the emperor himself. Because of his excellent studies, he went to the Hanlin Academy as a choreographer according to the custom and embarked on a path of imperial literati. He was later promoted slowly, and successively held the positions of Right Chunfang Zhongyun, Rebbe Waiter, and Rebbe Shangshu, and entered the ranks of high-ranking officials in the imperial court. He had a high position, good learning, poetry and articles were well-known in the world, and there were naturally many "fans" under him, and he gradually became the leader of the Donglin Party, and had a great influence on the government and the public. As the leader of the Donglin Party, Qian Qianyi did not deal well with the eunuch party headed by Wei Zhongxian, and suffered a lot of exclusion and attacks from the eunuch party, but fortunately he was only impeached and removed from his post, and did not suffer any major harm.
Qian Qianyi stills
Qian Qianyi is good at learning, but his political conduct and personal discipline are really not good, which is why he is still criticized by many people to this day. When he was a ceremonial attendant, in order to prevent Wen Tiren and Zhou Yanru from entering the cabinet, he instructed his students Qu Shiyan and others to secretly use black hands, resulting in increasingly fierce party disputes in the imperial court. The reason for his obstruction was that he was worried that after the two entered the cabinet, their reputation and status would surpass their own, and they did not proceed from the overall situation of the imperial court. Later, he was also retaliated against by Wen Tiren and Zhou Yanru, who were also revengeful, and took advantage of the fraud problem that arose in his presidency of the Zhejiang township examination to impeach him for leading him to resign. For political purposes, he wrote an inscription for the great eunuch Wang An, and colluded with another great eunuch, Cao Huachun, to jointly overthrow Wen Tiren. In the struggle for power and profit, Qian Qianyi showed a full "egoist" face, with milk is a mother, and the style and bones and discipline of the readers have been corroded by the flies and dogs.
Qian Qianyi and Liu Ru are stills
Qian Qianyi's most criticized things are "the water is too cold" and "itchy scalp". After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, qian Qianyi, in order to gain a place in the small court of the Southern Ming Dynasty, bowed his knees to the traitorous minister Ma Shiying and became the Rebbe Shangshu of the Southern Ming regime. Ma Shiying purged the Donglin Party and simply spared Qian Qianyi. Later, the Qing army went south and besieged the city of Nanjing, and his wife Liu Ru persuaded Qian Qianyi to throw water with him to martyr the country, and Qian Qianyi, who read a book on loyalty to the king and the sages of the country, was silent for a long time, and finally went to the edge of the pool to try the water, saying: "The water is too cold to go down." Liu Ru wanted to dive, but he also pulled him tightly. Between martyrdom and saving his life and continuing to enjoy a better life, Qian Qianyi chose the latter "difficultly". He led a group of Southern Ming ministers to Kaicheng in the torrential rain and surrendered to the Qing commander Duo Duo on his knees. In the face of the Qing court's bloody policy of "keeping hair and not leaving head", Qian Qianyi suddenly said: 'The scalp is itching badly", and went straight out the door, and not long after, Qian Qianyi, who cut his hair and kept braids, returned. "Temperance" was completely abandoned in the face of "living".
In the great changes in the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, it is not easy to make a unified and clear judgment on personal political trade-offs and sentiment gains and losses, after all, with the change of dynasties, serving the old lords of the previous dynasty is loyal, and conforming to the general trend and serving the new dynasty is also a reasonable choice of "good ministers choosing the lord and living". However, from the perspective of discipline and morality, national integrity, and other aspects, Qian Qianyi is undoubtedly much worse than Shi Kefa, Yue Qijie, Yuan Shu, and others. He also did not gain the trust of the Qing court, and after working in the Qing court for a few days, he went to work and returned to his hometown, and was also placed under residential surveillance by the Qing court. Later, he was implicated in a case and was imprisoned in the Prison of the Punishment Department, thanks to Liu Ru's vow to die and risk death to save him, he was able to get out of the cage and enjoy his freedom again. The history books record that in his later years, he contacted the anti-Qing and Restoration Forces and repeatedly plotted against the Qing Dynasty, and gave a lot of support to the anti-Qing cause of Zheng Chenggong and others, and wrote heroic verses praising the anti-Qing masters and directly rebuking the Qing court, "Filling the gap with the flesh of the Qing Dynasty" and "killing all the karmic slaves".
However, the author believes that Qian Qianyi, who is more greedy and afraid of death, still starts from "self-interest", there is no drama in the official field, and it is better to gain a little reputation after death, after all, the reputation of "second minister" is too ugly, or it is better to leave people with an image of not forgetting the old lord of the old dynasty. On June 17, 1664, Qian Qianyi died at the age of 83, completing his complicated life. In his body, there are both the amorous habits of the literati and the stereotypical faces of feudal scholars and doctors who uphold traditional morality; there is both the lonely and self-congratulatory self-congratulation of "Qingliu" and the stigma of being keen on meritorious fame and reducing disjointment; there is both the pragmatic idea of egoism that transcends loyalty to the king and serves the country, and there is also the desire to engage in anti-Qing activities after the Qing Dynasty and strive to rebuild the value of his life on the traditional moral concept. Such an embarrassing state has plagued Qian Qianyi's life, and he has not been relieved until his death.
The Qianlong Emperor personally decreed that his life deeds be included in the second part of the Biography of the Second Minister, nailing it to the pillar of historical shame, and his works were banned for a long time and could not be circulated. But its position as a literary suzerain seems to have not been shaken. When he celebrated his 80th birthday, Guizhuang sent a picture of the life union, which read: "Live on the coast of the East China Sea; such as the life of nanshan." After his death, Huang Zongxi wrote a "Eight Lamentations", in which Qian Qianyi was quoted as a "confidant in ordinary life" and affirmed his academic status as "fifty years of the Four Seas Sect Alliance". Even a person like Gu Yanwu, who did not serve the Qing court until his death and did not want to be a "protégé" of money, still affirmed that he was the "suzerainty of the article".
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