Daily Person - Li Ciming, late Qing dynasty official, famous literary historian Li Ciming

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Origin Vocabulary:

Nuclei

[ lame hé ]

Detailed explanation

Exactly, conclusively.

Qing Li Ciming "Yuemantang Reading Secretary, History, Guangxu Noon, The Tenth Day of the First Month of June": "The Book of Han Annotated Supplement is a volume of this book, and its strength is very specialized, and he said that he wrote this book for the eighteenth time. Citation 塙覈, Yu Yinxun is particularly cautious in the meaning of the text. ”

<h1>Li Ciming</h1>

Li Ciming (1830~1894), an official of the late Qing Dynasty, was a famous literary historian. The first supermodel, the character Hou, later changed to the current name, the word Aibo, the number of the guest, the room name Yue Man Tang, in his later years he signed himself "Yue Man Old Man". A native of The village of Xiguo Xiachuan (西郭霞川) (会稽; present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang).

Guangxu entered the priesthood for six years, and the official went to Shanxi Province to supervise the imperial history. Count the number of things sealed, do not avoid the power. The diary has been continuous for more than thirty years, and the reading experience is all included. He was knowledgeable, inheriting the yuxu of Qianjia Han studies, the study of scriptures and historiography, and was called "the palace army of old literature".

Li Ciming

Biography

Since childhood, he has been intelligent, diligent and studious, and has read a lot of books, and is a talent in Yuezhong. At the age of twelve or thirteen, he was heavily influenced by Wu Qingfang, a master of sinology and xuezheng, and was known as "Yuezhong Juncai". In his lifetime, he was not proud of his career, and he participated in the north-south township examination 11 times, and all of them fell behind. In the ninth year of Xianfeng (1859), he traveled north to the capital and donated funds to Hubu Langzhong, but he was deceived, lost his capital, and fell into the capital division, so his mother sold the field property to fulfill his ambitions, and the family road fell. In the ninth year of Tongzhi (1870), he began to raise at the age of 41. In the sixth year of Guangxu (1880), at the age of 51, he was a junior soldier and a member of the Gangnam Division of the Household Department. For this purpose, he specially carved a resume for self-deprecation, saying: "Daoguang Gengzhi Maocai, Xianfeng Gengshen Jing, Tongzhi Gengwu Renren, Guangxu Gengchen Jinshi." "In the sixteenth year of Guangxu (1890), he supplemented the imperial history of Shanxi Province, inspected the northern city during his tenure, supervised the streets, and performed his duties. When things happen, they dare to express their opinions, and they do not shy away from the powerful and powerful, and even fold people in person and discuss whether they are or not, so they are often hated by people and vilified by others. In the twentieth year of Guangxu (1894), the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War was defeated, and he was worried about the news and died of hemoptysis, at the age of 66. Mr. Yuan Xingyun commented with emotion: "His character, words, and knowledge are all commendable, and they cannot be discussed lightly. ”

Character anecdotes

Defeated in the examination room

Li Ciming had excellent endowments and was willing to work hard, and when he was a teenager, he was able to sing poetry with adults, and his literary name was well-known in the township, ranking among the "three young people in Yuezhong". (The other two are Wang Xingcheng and Chen Shanshi). However, the luck of the examination was not good, and he repeatedly failed to pass the list four times, and only then did he pass the examination at the age of twenty-two. Later, after twenty years, he fell off the list eleven times, and began to rise to the top at the age of forty-two. Finally, after ten years, he failed the list three times, and finally entered the examination at the age of fifty-two.

The same day of sadness

When Li Ciming was fourteen years old, his grandmother was seriously ill and was ordered by his parents to marry his cousin Ma Shuren, who was five years older than him. The original intention was to "rush the joy", helpless, the wedding was just completed, and the grandmother died on the same day. This regret has always been an unavoidable shadow in Li Ciming's heart, so that he and his wife have always maintained a relationship like a brother and sister, and it has affected Li Ciming's future love life.

Cool female color

Li Ciming is cool and good female. In the fifth year of Tongzhi, he "bought a song lady as a concubine with four hundred yuan of gold", and in the early years of Guangxu, he took advantage of the great drought in North China and the low population price to borrow money to buy two concubines, and one of the concubines spent one hundred and eighty taels of silver. His family had many servants, and at the poorest, his family "often employed on average three or four servants, two maids, a husband, a cook, and a coachman." Although "poor and destitute", there must be a car.

The Qing Dynasty stipulated that officials were not allowed to prostitute, but they could "coerce the superior", that is, interact with the lingren, so it became a custom for officials to make good friends with the lingren. Li Ciming was quite good at "this mouthful", he often asked Lingren to accompany him during drinking banquets, and he also went to live under Lingren, and Zhu Xiafen, a disciple of Mei Lanfang's grandfather Mei Huixian and a famous beijing celebrity known as "Huabang Zhuangyuan", was even more his best.

Unfortunately, there are no heirs

Li Ciming had no children after marriage, and under the pressure of succession, he took three concubines at the age of thirty-seven, forty, and fifty-nine, but still failed to give birth to a son and a half. For this reason, he has always been grumpy. Later, he often lingered in the wind and moon place, and it is said that because he often went to the brothel to see all the beautiful women in the world, he had a bisexual tendency. He also became infected with the habit of "good male color".

Bookish obsession

Li Ciming's luck in the examination was not good, he was not very happy in the official field, his income was limited, the cost of living in Beijing was huge, and he often took out debts to survive. However, according to Wu Zhenzhi's analysis of Mr. Li Ciming's income and expenditure from the "Diary of Yue Man Tang", it was found that the largest expense of his monthly expenditure was to buy books. In his diary, he often records his crazy purchase in the book market. Buying books, reading books, and collecting books has become the most proud and happy thing for him since he was a child. One year, the winter was very cold, and Li Ciming's money was spent on ancient books. He had no money to buy coal, so he had to shiver through the cold and count the days. He stayed up late to study, and in order to seek verification, he rummaged through the boxes and poured them over, which was very hard. But he said excitedly, "The scriptures are pleasing to people, so it is!" ”

Geng Jie is straight

Li Ciming has a strong personality with clear love and hatred, and for people or things that he is not accustomed to, he often scolds in person or immediately, so that some close friends, such as Zhang Zhidong, finally declare a break for some reason. Sometimes he would also examine himself in his diary, but because he did not like to lean on others and seek perfection, he never changed his old habits. However, although he has many harsh words and deeds in the world, he treats his relatives, even domestic servants, relatives and friends orphans with warmth, which shows that he is a person with a temperament.

Official career

Li Ciming's life as a Beijing official presents an extremely contradictory state: on the one hand, Li Ciming's formal income is extremely low, and other sources of income are not many, so he is often in debt, crying poor and bitter. We look at his diaries, in which he often cries about poverty, what is "poorer than the day", what is "more embarrassed than the day, and the debt is like a cow's hair". On the other hand, he has always pursued a lifestyle that is not commensurate with his income level: living in a large mansion, using many servants, and having a chariot and horse when he goes out.

From the thirteenth year of Tongzhi, Li Ciming rented a mansion, the old residence of Ji Wenchang, the former governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, which was not ordinary: "There are more than twenty houses, there are Xuan and garden, widely planted flowers and trees, and grandeur." "In the garden, there are scenic spots such as Xuan Cui Fang, BiJiao Hall, Flower Shadow Gallery, Xiao Dong Pu, etc., and the lake and mountains are beautiful.

What is even more striking is his long-term indulgence in the "high social life" of feasting, singing, and traveling. We look at his diary, he spends half of every month eating at a large restaurant, "more than half of the month has a drinking feast", and he is more often very expensive in sound and color. "In the third year of Guangxu, his brother-in-law died of starvation in the countryside, but he spent more than a hundred taels of wine and food in a year in Beijing." Although Yu is poor, the cost of wine and food is not less than a hundred gold. In the seven years since the general plan went out, the senders were only ten golden ears. ”

Therefore, Li Ciming's life belongs to the type of low-income and high consumption. The first reason for Li Ciming's contradictory state of life is, of course, his low income and his desire for enjoyment.

Li Ciming's official position has always been low, so his income is very low. The donors have also hollowed out the family foundation, so the family cannot receive help. But Li Ciming's taste in life is quite high. Li Ciming was born into a landlord family, and in his early years, his family still had some land products, and he did not suffer hardships since he was a child, and his life was quite prosperous. Therefore, he pays attention to enjoyment all his life, "food is not boring, and he is not tired of fine". His attention to and care for clothes far exceeded that of Zeng Guofan, such as the diary of April 25 of this year: "In April, beaded fur small mink sleeves silver and red river robes were collared." Ordinary clothes, no such Tori also. With very good sleeves, there is a wind that bears the flatness and density, and the flower hydrangeas are like a palace body. Although this robe cost him 20 taels of silver, he did not feel pain, but was quite proud. Xu Yishi said: "Ci Ming is poor, sometimes seen in the "Diary", and it is quite a sweet enjoyment. "It's true.

Li Ciming is not only impatient with poverty, but also looks down on those colleagues who "don't know how to enjoy". For example, his contemporary Li Yongqing was a tongzhi four-year Hanlin. The "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" said that this person was "poor and strict", did not accept bad rules, and every time he went out, he ran on foot and did not ride. Everyone called him frugal, but Li Ciming mocked him in his diary: "He has no talent, but he is patient with evil food and clothing, he is quick and good at walking, he grows up in a remote county, the world is a farmer, and he does not know that the world is sweet and enjoyable." His value orientation is evident.

The second reason is the depression of Li Ciming's mentality. Li Ciming became famous early, his self-esteem was extremely high, and he thought that by virtue of his own talent, he would fight for "golden house beauty like jade" when he was like probing for things, but he was trapped all his life, his career was sloppy, and he was deeply ashamed of this. Therefore, during Li Ciming's many years as the head of the household department, he showed quite tired of his ministry, and even "did not sign it through the years", because he was "ashamed to be with the youth" and "followed the waves with the common officials". His more than twenty years of career as a Beijing official were basically spent in disappointment, laziness, cynicism, and complaints. So simply indulge in poetry to eliminate the block Lei. Because of his unsatisfactory situation, Li Ciming "had a lot of female and yellow mouths", "sexually good scolding", "harsh arguments", loved to criticize all kinds of ugly situations in the official arena at that time, and "at the same time celebrities, all of them were extremely verbal and insulting, leaving no room" for them. As a result, it won the title of "Outspoken" and was regarded as a clear stream. History said that he "did not shy away from power, folded people in person, and discussed Zang no." However, although he hated official corruption, Li Ciming was actually just as enthusiastic about promotion. In the fourteenth year of Guangxu (1888), Jian was sent to the provinces to study politics, and he also went around in advance and did a lot of work, but the result was not successful. After Guangxu finally granted the Shanxi Dao Supervision Imperial History in the sixteenth year, his "outspoken" sharpness was greatly reduced. The protégé Pan Zengxiang said, "The complaints are gradually flattening, and I want to have something to say, but I have not yet sealed it, but I talk about current affairs and politics, and I don't fight."

At the beginning of Li Ciming's tenure as an official, he also had a dignified and honorable manner, "tasting seven examples of self-encouragement: one does not answer foreign officials, two does not pay Hanlin, three does not pay tribute to celebrities, four does not despise rich people, five does not recognize the world in the same year, six does not worship the teacher of the house to recommend the examination, and seven does not marry and celebrate." But he was far from keeping his promise. On the one hand, Li Ciming profoundly ridiculed those who "tried to climb and climb" in his diary to seek gifts from foreign officials. On the other hand, he himself is a master of "qu ji climbing". In the spring of the seventh year of Guangxu, he went to Xianliang Temple to assassinate Li Hongzhang, the governor and minister of Beiyang, "because of the embarrassment of recent days, I hope that he will be rewarded with the example." This time Lee "gave farewell, saluted the twelve gold, and rewarded the two thousand."

The biggest "gift" that Li Ciming has made in his life is the annual cultivation of more than 1,100 taels of cultivation obtained by serving as the "Head of the Beixue Haitang Mountain of Tianjin Qingjin Academy" in the last few years of his career, which is the basic guarantee for his living standards to become higher and higher in the years after his career as a Beijing official. "Tianjin Qingjin Academy Beixue Haitang Mountain Chief" is actually just a pseudonym, there is no need to run to Tianjin several times a year, but Shu Xiu is so rich, the reason is very simple: this is actually Li Hongzhang gave him a "sealing fee". Gai Li Hongzhang was well aware of Li Ciming's good scolding, and he knew that he was at the center of high-level political contradictions, and it was easy for the Qingliu to catch the small braids, so he tried his best to tie up li. Although Li Ciming indulged recklessly and "scolded with affection", when the late Qing Dynasty qingliu all competed to scold Li Hongzhang, he never opened his mouth, "Ciming is talking about the road, not impeaching Li Hongzhang." ”

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