Speaking of the athletes of the late Qing Dynasty poetry scene, Gong Zizhen's popularity is among the top three, and he has left hundreds of poems in his lifetime.
How crazy is this man?
His "madness" is reflected in all aspects of life.
The "Flying Boots" incident
On the eve of the unusually boring storm, Gong Zizhen went south from the capital in his later years and lived in the Kunshan Yuxuan Pavilion.
His friend Wei Yuan has a garden in Yangzhou Cangxiang, and every time he passes through Yangzhou, he lives in Qiushixuan.
Gong Zizhen wrote a couplet for the inscription of the Garden: "Read ten thousand books, travel thousands of miles; A total generation of classics, into a family speech. ”
A lot of meaning can be read from it.
Once, Gong Zizhen and the guests were talking loudly at Qiu Shixuan, dancing with their hands and feet, and actually kicked their boots away.
When sending off customers, I looked for boots everywhere and couldn't find anything.
A few days later, I found the boots on top of the tent.
Academic madness
Gong Zizhen has always longed for the opportunity to help the people through the world and settle the country.
Although this is the only way for a scholar to enter the core of state power and realize his political ideals.
In the third year of Qing Daoguang, his uncle Gong Shouzheng served as the examiner of the meeting, Gong Zizhen avoided as usual and could not participate in the examination, and his mother Duan Tao also wrote poems to persuade him.
On April 28, 2016, Gong Zizhen took the court examination and appeared first, and his friends complimented him as "Junding Dakui".
But he sneered and said, "Look at the fortunes of the Yi family." "Whether or not you can win the championship is a matter of the fortunes of the Qing Dynasty."
It can be seen that Gong Zizhen's ambitions are great and his self-esteem is high.
Gong Zizhen has his own views on the imperial examination.
Once, he went to visit Gong Shouzheng, his uncle who was Rebbe Shoshu.
Before the uncle and nephew could say a few words of greeting, someone informed him that there was a protégé asking to see him.
The person who came to the new point of Hanlin was proud of the spring breeze.
Gong Zizhen had to temporarily go to the ear room to avoid, but the conversation between the outside was very clear.
Shang Shu asked the protégé what he had been busy with recently, and the protégé replied, there was nothing important to do, and on weekdays he just copied the handwriting and used some work on calligraphy.
Shang Shu praised: "No matter how big or small the chao kao is, the first thing is that the font is dignified, the ink is thick, and the dot painting is stable." If the calligraphy is first-class, the fame is as straight as probing the bag! ”
The protégé was listening to the teachings, but Gong Zizhen couldn't help but laugh at the next door: "Hanlin learned, but so!" ”
Hearing this, the protégé was very embarrassed and hurriedly resigned.
Shang Shu was furious and reprimanded Gong Zizhen, and his uncle and nephew fell out of the face.
Gong Zizhen did not enter the Han Garden, depressed, he simply let his daughters, daughters-in-law, concubines, and maids all go to the pool every day to practice the pavilion.
If someone said how great Hanlin was, he scoffed: "Is Hanlin still worth mentioning now?" None of my family's female elites are not allowed to enter Hanlin. If nothing else, just by relying on the brush characters of the hand pavilion, it is absolutely enough! ”
Consumption mania
Since his adolescence, Gong Zizhen has followed his father to the north and south, and has had contacts with master's scholars, sloppy literati, grass heroes, mountain forest hermits, small people in the city, and prostitutes.
He spent so much money that he waited for his pocket to be shy, and then asked his friends for a loan.
In Yangzhou, not only did he eat and drink in his friend Wei Yuan's garden, but even the clothes on his body and the boots on his feet were also Wei Yuan's.
Once, when he returned to Yangzhou from Jinling, the upper half of the white fox fur on his body was quite new, and the lower half was all mud.
It turned out that those two days of snow and rain, cold wind to the bone, friends gave him a white fox fur to withstand the cold, he was short, and did not know how to cut, dragged in the muddy water even unconscious.
Life madness
This thinker and great poet did not like to wash his face, and did not even wash his face for several days.
Wei Yuan asked the servant to serve with a washbasin, and he was furious: I have always disliked washing, and when you let the servant do this, didn't you insult me?
Wei Yuan had no choice but to apologize with a smile on his face.
The madness of reading habits
Gong Zizhen loved to read. Every morning, "the servant places a stick incense, a tamba gu one, a cigarette holder next to the giant poppy and a huge plan, and the mountain people sit in the middle of it every day, and there is nothing else to do."
When you are tired of reading, you fall into a deep sleep. Although they wear clothes and hats, they still ignore it.
If the servant wanted to liberate him, he was driven away by his rebuke.
That's really the hand-to-hand scroll.
Gong Zizhen laughed and scolded when writing poems, and was full of passion between the lines, and in life, he also "did not like to be modified sexually, so his clothes were broken, and he did not change for ten years", known as "Gong Nerd", and some people said that he was a madman and a monster.
Yet he blamed it with reason and moderation. As we all know, "I advise Tiangong to shake things up and demote talents in an eclectic manner" is Gong Zizhen's famous sentence.
If he had always been restrained and scrupulous, could he have written such a deafening poem at a time when modern China was "greatly changed and suddenly opened"?