Dong Ke's ancestral home was Suzhou, and his ancestors moved to Shaobo during the Ming Hongwu period. His father's name was Wan Yuan (字善長), and his mother was dingshi (丁氏), who gave birth to Dong Ke on the fourth day of the first month of August in the twelfth year of Jiaqing (1807). At that time, his grandfather Dong Xiwu named him "Chun", the small character "Changchun", and the word "Shouqing", hoping that he would live a long life and be rich.
At the time of Dong Ke's birth, his family was already quite poor. The Dong family originally lived in the old mansion west of the Shaobo Canal and southeast of the Huizheng Bridge (formerly known as "Xiaohexi", and there was a famous Brahmin Temple next to the house, now a double-line lock). In the eighteenth (1813) and nineteenth (1814) years of Jiaqing, my grandfather and father died of illness one after another. Due to the "two major deaths in a row, the family was devastated within five years, and there was no way to do anything", coupled with "the water of the lake rose in autumn, and the old mansion was half in the water", the old mansion was already dilapidated and uninhabitable, and had to be moved here in the east of the Canal, the south of the Temple Lane, the north of Cangxiang (also called "Nanhua Lane"), and the east of the street.
In the middle is Dong Ke
Only a year later, he had to move from dutianmiao to a house facing the canal at the west of Hongqiao and the west entrance of Lijia Lane (i.e., Pan Qifang Lane). Here Dong Ke finally lived a relatively stable life, living for 25 years. The famous "Reading Map of the Bonfire Class" is painted here. In the seventeenth year of Daoguang (1837), he moved three more times to East Street, that is, to the west of Shijia Lane and diagonally opposite the Sanguan Hall, which was opposite the Nursery Hall (now Shaobo Central Kindergarten). Later, when Dong Ke returned from Hunan in the third year of Xianfeng (1853), he also lived in Liujia Lane (now Changchun Lane, the former residence of the Qi family). Dong Ke can be said to have changed his life five times.
Due to the poverty of the family, the family pinned their hopes for revitalization on Dong Ke. When he was 4 years old, his grandfather cut paper into words and pointed them out to him word for word. Dong Ke was also gifted and intelligent, loved to read, and soon was able to recite the Zhu ZiBai Lu Zhijia maxim in the middle hall. At the age of 7, Dong Ke entered a private school set up at the Pan Ancestral Hall and studied at Gong Minhuai. At the age of 8, although the family was "blind and helpless", his mother still "took off the hairpin and forced the gong", so that he continued to learn from Yu Xiaoming and learned the eight strands of text. In the fifth year of Daoguang (1825), the 18-year-old Dong Ke felt that he should take on the responsibility of supporting his family, so he began his tongue cultivation career, first "outside the house, set up a school to train The Meng", and then in order to save money, he "transferred the training to the family".
At this time, Dong Ke taught while taking the exam, but unfortunately it was not sold. It was not until the eleventh year of Daoguang (1831) that he was admitted to the sixth place in the county school and was trained by the school envoy Bai Xiaoshan. In the thirteenth year of Daoguang (1833), because his name "Chun" was the same as that of the former Yan Zheng, it was renamed "Alcohol" (later renamed "Gong" to avoid the name of the Tongzhi Emperor).
In the seventeenth year of Daoguang (1837), he was ranked twenty-two in the Zhongxiang Examination, sixty-seven in the Twenty-year (1840), sixteen in the first class of the Bohol Hall Re-examination, twenty-eight in the Temple Examination, and thirty-fourth in the Imperial Examination.
Since then, Dong Ke has entered the eunuch sea and left his hometown. During this time, he returned to his hometown twice.
The first time was in August of the second year of Xianfeng (1852). Dong Ke taught Hunan the grain storage road, and he asked him to go south from the waterway to his post, and while inspecting the canal canal, he begged to return to his hometown on leave to repair the tomb. After arriving at Shao Bo at the end of December, Wen Taiping's army captured Wuchang, and the road to his post was blocked, so he was able to "live in the county town of Xiaolinglong Mountain Pavilion" at the end of the year. At the beginning of the third year of Xianfeng (1853), when he was preparing to dress up for his post, the news suddenly came that the Taiping Army had descended the river, conquered Nanjing, and then moved north to Yangzhou. When the wife heard the news, she immediately sent someone to send a car and ordered her to take refuge in a relative in Dongxiang Daqiao Town.
At that time, Li Yinqing, a squire in Daqiao Town, organized a township regiment on the spot to conduct drills and patrols to prevent the war from hitting. Li Yinqing's righteous deeds were favored and admired by Dong Ke, who avoided the town of Daqiao, and the two soon met and intersected. In order to counterattack and insist on the needs, Li Yinqing drew a "Map of the Situation in Dongxiang, Jiangdu" after field investigation, and Dong Ke felt that it was very valuable, so he copied a copy to treasure.
Later, due to the urging of the imperial court, and "the Yangtze River cannot go", Dong Ke took a detour north to take up his duties.
The second time was the death of his mother on August 11, 1853, the third year of Xianfeng(1853), and after receiving a letter from his family on the second day of September, Dong Ke's spirit flew over, and he was desperate and immediately left to return home. When he arrived in Jiangsu in December, he learned that Yangzhou had been recaptured the day before, so he came ashore from Sanjiangying to Shaobo and settled in Liujia Lane.
Dong Ke Reading Office (under construction)
During the period of Ding's worries, Dong Ke felt that he had served all the places in his life, whether in the mountains or the waters, the dangers and the passes, "everything he experienced, he knew the biji", only "with the first and second anecdotes of his hometown", he was "helpless", although "he was poor and could not see his own eyelashes", so he decided to write for his hometown. He checked the materials, visited the villagers, visited the ancient temples, traveled all over the rivers and ditches in his hometown, and from the july of the fifth year of Xianfeng (1855) to the completion of the manuscript in September, he finally wrote the four-volume and nine-part "Gantang Xiaozhi", collecting and preserving a precious historical material for his hometown.
In the sixth year of Xianfeng (1856), the Taiping Army's Erke Yangzhou, the Fairy Temple, and the Shaobo Front line became the forefront of the war. Dong Ke also picked up the "Map of the Situation in Dongxiang, Jiangdu" drawn by Li Yinqing, and with this map as the main body, drew a map of the rivers between Yangzhen and Zhen from the Fuzhi, a map of the Binjiang Continents from the county zhi, and a map of the Shaobo Zhuhu lakes from the "Little Chronicle of the North Lake", and integrated them into a relatively complete and detailed "Yangzhen Guayi Situation Map" (47cm×61cm) for local use.
Scenery of Sanjiang Camp
Not only that, Dong Ke is also enthusiastic about the public welfare and charity in his hometown. In the second year of Xianfeng (1852), he saw that the water and iron cattle in his hometown were well preserved, but the inscription was unclear, so he supplemented the inscription "Huaishui north to the river Yangyang, the long causeway is like a rainbow solid golden soup." Smelting iron is made of rhinoceros town gantang, and kun is used to make kanjukgang. Rong people and livestock are protected without boundaries, and hundreds of millions of years are praised for Pingkang." In the twenty-ninth year of Daoguang (1849), he wrote Xu Yufeng's "Record of Rebuilding the Wanshou Palace" for his hometown. In the eleventh year of Tongzhi (1872), he also wrote the "Reconstruction of Pingshan Hall" written by Jiang Chaobo for Yangzhou, leaving a precious ink treasure. He also donated funds to the Fraternity Hall, founded the Compassion Association, rescued the displaced people and the elderly, the sick and disabled who were ravaged by the flood, and donated funds to promote the construction of Hexi Street, which was named "Sanfu Street" by his own letter.
Shaobo Lake scenery
After Dong Ke died of illness, his coffin did not return. Out of gratitude to him, the people of his hometown built a crown tomb for him in the south of Shaobo Town, and a 2085-character inscription was written by his protégé, Feng Wenwei, a protégé of Guangxu II (1876).
Zhu Yuqi (Sea Currents, Ji Qi)