Zheng Xie (郑板桥), a famous calligrapher and painter of the Qing Dynasty, is one of the most famous figures in the famous "Eight Monsters of Yangzhou".
Zheng Banqiao has many famous works, such as calligraphy "Rare Confusion", calligraphy and painting "Ink Bamboo Diagram", "Orchid Sketch" and so on. He is a native of Xinghua, Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, but he has a deep relationship with our Shandong Province - his career was experienced in Shandong Province, and he served as a Zhi County in Shandong Province for many years in the Qing Dynasty, first in Fan County, and then in Wei County.
Like most intellectuals of that era, Zheng Xie (Zheng Banqiao) studied and studied for the primary goal of taking the "imperial examination". His path to the imperial examination was not too smooth (but he finally passed the examination): in the Kangxi period, xiucai was admitted in the examination, in the Yongzheng period, in the first year of Qianlong (1736), the jinshi ranked in the middle of the "second rank eighty-eight".
After zhongjinshi, he was not immediately able to become an official, but needed to wait for vacancies, until the sixth year of Qianlong (1742) Zheng Banqiao was appointed as The Zhi County of Fan County, at this time he was already 49 years old.
Fan County was originally part of Shandong and is now part of Henan. Fan County is next to the Yellow River, the terrain is relatively flat but often flooded, belongs to the relatively small population of the land barren area. Moreover, the county court is also very simple, with a total of eight officials.
The place is small and the population is small, but the government is not busy. He also elaborated in his own poem, in which he wrote: "Forty or fifty negative Guo people, the hall of falling flowers is clean and dustless." Bitter artemisia vegetables sent neighboring monks, bald-sleeved quail dressed in small officials poor. ”
During his tenure as The County of Fan County, his political achievements were very good, and the population and cultivated land of Fan County increased significantly. Therefore, in the eleventh year of Qianlong (1746), he was transferred to Weixian Renzhi County.
The transfer to Weixian county can be regarded as a heavy use of Zheng Banqiao, which is located on the main road between central Shandong and Jiaodong Peninsula - densely populated, fertile fields, and commercial prosperity was the largest county in Shandong Province at that time - of course, the large city of Weifang has now been established.
At the same time, an important reason why his superior wanted to transfer him to Weixian Zhixian was that there was a disaster in Weixian at that time -- there was a drought in the first year of his transfer, and there was a flood in the third year, and locusts appeared in the third year, until the autumn harvest of the fourth year, and the famine was not over. When he went to Weixian To inspect the disaster situation in the low-lying areas near the coast, he once wrote a poem: "The vast water of the sea meets the sky, and when the grass is in the grass, I see a field." The waves are salted everywhere, and since ancient times, He once said that there was a year "to do sighs."
Disaster relief is Zheng Banqiao's primary task in Weixian County: he first opened an official warehouse to help the poor, then ordered the rich to cook porridge to help and tide over the difficulties with the victims, in addition to requiring merchants to sell grain at a fair price and not to raise the price...
After the disaster relief came to an end, Zheng Banqiao began to build a large-scale project to "work for relief", which is to repair the Weixian city wall that was damaged by the flood. He took the lead in donating 80 feet of the city wall, and under his leadership, the restoration of the Weixian city wall began in October 1748, and was basically completed in March of the following year, returning to the appearance it was before the flood.
When there are no disasters, Weixian is a very prosperous and rich place. One it is located on the main road from central Shandong to the peninsula region, so it is densely populated and prosperous in commerce. The second of it is the sea to the north, which also produces table salt. Therefore, at that time, Weixian was known as "Donglai Shouyi" and "Little Suzhou". However, the gap between the rich and the poor is also huge, the rich have abundant assets, life is extravagant and lavish, eating and drinking arbitrarily, and gambling has become a common practice. The land of the poor people in the lower classes was occupied by the rich and bureaucrats, and they had no choice but to go to the barren mountains to cultivate crops. Rich men eat, drink, gamble, and enjoy themselves freely, while the children of poor families can only be sold to their homes as slaves and so on.
Zheng Banqiao was very sympathetic to the poor peasants, and was often recorded in the poems he wrote. He wrote in the "Fourth Book of the Fan County Bureau": "I think that the first people in heaven and earth are only farmers, and the soldiers are the last of the four people." In the famous painting "Weixian Bureau Painting Bamboo In the Middle Painting Of the Year Bo Bao Da Zhongzhong Cheng" inscription poem: "Ya Zhai lying down to listen to Xiao Xiao Bamboo, suspected to be the sound of folk suffering." Some small Wucao Prefecture county officials, one branch and one leaf are always concerned. This further reflects the precious spirit of a local official who perceives the sufferings of the people and listens to the voices of the people.
One of the important tasks of Dangzhi County is to try and judge cases. Judging from Zheng Banqiao's posthumous "Judgment", civil dispute cases are the mainstay, which can be divided into more than 300 cases, such as family property disputes, heir succession, buying and selling people, women remarrying, pawning and selling farmhouses, and strictly prohibiting gambling, and only one case is a homicide-causing death case. Because of Zheng Banqiao's fair judgment, people commented that during his tenure as an official, he was able to achieve "no retention, no wrongdoing", and even "prison empty people several times" (prison empty). In the small world of Weixian County under the jurisdiction of Zheng Banqiao, politics is relatively clear.
Zheng Banqiao was very clean and honest as an official, and he had been a county magistrate for many years and did not have any savings. In the "Record of Xiuwei County," Zheng Banqiao publicly declared: "This county will not handle a single penny or anything." In the Qing Dynasty, corruption and bribery in the officialdom became a common practice, and although the Zhixian of Qipin was only 45 taels of silver per year, through channels such as collecting money and grain, the people's fat and people's ointment that could generally be looted could be obtained at least 10,000 or 20,000 taels of silver per year. If you add all kinds of ugly income, after three years of office, you can also have a huge income of more than 100,000 silver. Zheng Banqiao has been doing Zhixian county for nearly twelve years, but it is "the return of the eunuch sea with two sleeves empty". He said in the "Letter to Mo Di" that "Xinghua people laugh at me and I will not look for money."
Zheng Banqiao has a very strange personality, so he is often "out of place" with his colleagues in the official field. He feasted with the bureaucrats in Jinan at Baotu Spring, but he wrote a poem that "flowing to the sea is a brine, and who can distinguish it is a clear spring", which is really a big trouble.
For the restoration of the Weixian City God Temple, a stele should be erected, and an inscription should be written by Zheng Banqiao. Ordinary people make inscriptions, always have to quote the words of the ancient sages, a little sigh, but he is different, the first sentence said "a corner and four legs and the hairy one is a lin", a little mockery of the non-existent gods. What's more, he pointed out that whether it was the Jade Emperor or the City God, they were all clay sculptures and wood carvings, which were created by people. If such a stele was erected in the City God Temple, if it were not for the fact that he had the dignity of his parents and officials, and his handwriting was excellent, this national treasure-level stone stele would have been smashed by the superstitious squire long ago. Zheng Banqiao also wrote "Rebuilding the Records of Wenchang Pavilion", which are official articles. Xiu Wenchang Pavilion and The City God Temple are both the virtues of county officials, and county officials make inscriptions, so they should brag about it. The most conspicuous sentence in Zheng Banqiao's inscription is: "To worship this person, you must learn from this person, and Hugh must be a jerk and prostrate himself." This kind of slang colloquialism is just a joke on a daily basis, written in the inscription, carved in stone, embedded in the wall, which is really shocking.
Because of his eccentric personality, his career in the process of becoming an official was not very successful. After many years of becoming the governor of Weixian County, he had the intention of resigning from the government—of course, he was old, and it was normal for him to resign at the age of sixty. The idea of resigning from the government was already evident in the fourteenth year of Qianlong (1749 AD). In this year, he wrote "Zi Yong" and said: "Weixian three years fan five years, Shandong old officials I came first." The first order did not enter the true hidden clumsiness, and there was no word to be spared. Finally, in 1753, at the age of 61, he returned to Yangzhou because he had violated his superiors and fell ill. When he resigned, he used only three donkeys to carry his books and luggage. After returning to Yangzhou, he continued to sell calligraphy and painting until his death in 1766.
Although Zheng Banqiao eventually resigned from the government, his reputation in Weixian County has been passed down from generation to generation. For example, Weixian's famous snack "Chaotian Pot" is related to him. Legend has it that in a certain year, Zheng Banqiao saw that the farmers in Weixian County could not eat hot rice, so he let people set up a large iron pot and cook hot rice for passers-by, and the pot was boiled with pig goods, meatballs, dried tofu and so on. The soup is boiling and rotten, and customers sit around the pot, and the chef scoops the hot soup, adds some coriander and soy sauce, and prepares thin dough cakes. Because the pot has no lid, Zheng Banqiao named it "Chaotian Pot". Today, the signboard of Weifang's "Chaotian Pot" is marked with the words "Banqiao Soup".
Zheng Banqiao was more nostalgic for his time in Weixian County, and in 1764, he also wrote a poem "Huaiwei County", expressing his feelings: "Paper flowers are like snow flying in the sky, and the delicate women swing around." The five-colored luo skirt swings in the wind to bring the butterflies back to spring. ”
In the downtown area of Weifang, there is a ZhengBanqiao Memorial Hall in the middle of the Shiwat Garden Cultural Block, which is now a tourist attraction in Weifang City.