In the "Records of the North East Garden" written by Liang Gongchen of the Qing Dynasty, it tells the story of Tao Shu, a famous minister of the Qing Dynasty, who was unwilling to marry her daughter to him because she failed the examination, and married a maid pretending to be her daughter. So, is this story true?
(Statue of Tao Shu)
Let's first look at what happened.
Tao Shu is a native of Anhua, Hunan. His father Tao Biquan was very talented, a poet and scholar who was very famous at that time, but he repeatedly failed in the imperial examination, plus he liked to collect books and did not know how to manage, so his life deteriorated, and by the time Tao Shu was born, he was already very poor.
Influenced by Tao Biquan, Tao Shu was easy to read since childhood, plus he was very talented, and he saved a belly of knowledge at a young age.
Tao Biquan valued Tao Shu very much and entrusted the matchmaker to set a good marriage for him early.
The woman's surname is Huang, her family is rich, and people are also born handsome. The reason why Huang Father was willing to marry his daughter to Tao Shu was entirely because he admired Tao Shu's talent and thought that he would definitely be able to become an official in the future. So he made an agreement with Tao Biquan to set the wedding date after the township test.
Unexpectedly, Tao Shu was actually named Sun Shan. Father Huang then muttered, suspecting that Tao Shuhui would be the same as Tao Biquan, even if he was talented, he could only be a poor student for a lifetime.
At this time, the rich family surnamed Qian in the city found Huang Father with heavy gold. It turned out that he had lost his wife not long ago, and when he heard of Huang's beauty, he wanted to marry her as a stepmother.
Father Huang hesitated, so he told Huang to let her decide for herself.
The Huang clan was not willing to marry Tao Shu, and after hearing about it, they were naturally willing. However, the wedding date is approaching, if you suddenly repent, it is bound to damage your reputation, and you may even eat a lawsuit, so Huang Father is quite annoyed.
Huang believes that Tao Shu has never seen her, so why not let the maid marry her. Father Huang felt that there was some truth, so when it came to the wedding date, he married the maid who had grown up with the Huang clan since he was a child, pretending to be the Huang clan and marrying Tao Shu.
(The maid gets married, trying to take her meaning)
After marriage, the maid kept secrets on the one hand, and on the other hand, she undertook the family affairs, so that Tao Shu could concentrate on the examination.
With the encouragement of the maid, Tao Shu was very energetic, more and more hard to study, and also passed the road of the imperial examination, and finally realized his dream at the age of 23 and became the first soldier in Anhua County.
Subsequently, Tao Shu became an official.
In the decades since he entered politics, Tao Shu has been an upright official, scrupulously fulfilled his duties, and made great contributions to the reform of the bureaucracy; at the same time, he has been diligent and loving to the people, and has made outstanding achievements in local government, so he has repeatedly won heavy responsibilities.
After Daoguang succeeded to the throne, as a heavy vassal of the former emperor, he was still very highly regarded, and soon he was promoted to inspector of Anhui, and then transferred to the inspector of Jiangsu. By the time of Daoguang's ten years, because of his outstanding political achievements, Daoguang promoted him to a heavy post as the governor of Liangjiang and made him the prince Shaobao.
The maid who pretended to be Huang to marry Tao Shu also followed suit and was given the title of Lady yipin by the imperial court.
Although the maid was a noble woman, she was worried after all, so she finally told Tao Shu the truth.
When Tao Shu learned about it, he was quite surprised. However, I thought that the maid had accompanied him for many years, and if it were not for the maid's encouragement, how could he have today. So he forgave the maid's imposter's sin and remained as usual with her.
(Huang Shi, who was swept out of the house, took his meaning)
Later, after Tao Biquan died of illness, Tao Shu returned to his hometown to worry. A few years after learning that Huang was married to a rich family surnamed Qian, due to the rich family surnamed Qian bullying others to occupy other people's fields, the result was an armed struggle, and they were killed by the other side in the melee.
After the rich family surnamed Qian was killed, in order to deprive the rich family of the rich family named Qian, their people bullied the Huang family in every way, and finally drove her out of the house.
After Tao Shu heard about it, he sighed, so he asked people to send 50 taels of gold to the Huang family to subsidize the family.
Huang Shi held the gold, thinking that in the first thought, his fate had changed drastically, and he couldn't help but feel remorseful, so he cried for most of the night before going to sleep.
The next day, Huang Shi got up and found that the gold placed on the pillow had disappeared, and he was angry and annoyed, and finally his sorrow came from his heart, and all his thoughts were gray, and he hanged himself.
Of course, this story only appears in the "Records of the North East Garden", and it is not recorded in the history. Tao Shu, who is in history, married a wife named Huang Defang. That is to say, the wife originally married was the daughter of the Huang family, and there was no such thing as dropping the bag to replace it.
Whether this matter is true or not seems to be untestable now. However, judging from the tone of "good has good retribution, evil has evil retribution" recorded in the "Beidongyuan Record", and the Huang clan remarried to the "Qian" surname, it is obvious that the possibility of attaching it is relatively large. It is very likely that it was the kind of article that fell into the relevant articles of the literati and eventually included Liang Gongchen in his records. Besides, the woman is also a local of the Tao family, marrying someone must be "earth-shattering", if the woman is married, where does the Tao family not know? So the content doesn't seem to be credible.
(Reference: Records of the North East Garden)