Keyuan Garden advocates reverence: one Garden and one school of painting
Speaking of the gardens of Dongguan, there is one person who must not be mentioned, this is Zhang Yinglan. His descendants built four gardens, which are still known as Zhenguanyi, which are the xuepu of the second son Zhang Xiyuan (next to present-day Talc Street), the Keyuan Garden of the fifth son Zhang Jingxiu, the Daosheng Garden of Zhang Jiamu, the third son of Zhang Xiyuan, and the Xinyu Garden of the fifth son Zhang Jiayan (formerly on Xiaguan Road), and the names of these gardens are familiar among the older generation of Dongguan people.
Among the gardens of the Zhang family, Keyuan is the most famous, and its garden advocates reverence are also well-known. Zhang Jingxiu (張敬修), also known as Zhang Jingxiu (字鉴中), was the fifth son of Zhang Yinglan, born in 1824 and died in 1864. In the twenty-fifth year of Daoguang (1845), Zhang Jingxiu donated money to a Tongzhi according to the custom of the Qing Dynasty. Because of his meritorious service in repairing the fort in his native province, he was official in Guangxi in the same year, and during his tenure, he was promoted to the rank of Tongzhi of Qingyuan County because he captured the leader of the plot of Si'en County, and successive officials from Wuzhou, Pingle, and Baise. In the twenty-seventh year of Daoguang (1847), Luo Gang and others revolted in Pingle, and Zhang vigorously defended the provincial capital in Guangxi, rescued foreign counties, and was promoted to prefect. Soon, Ling Eighteen and others of the Guangdong Heaven and Earth Society revolted, and he presented himself as an overseer and urged him to send troops to suppress it. His proposal was not adopted, so he resigned his official post and retired in the name of his brother's death, and returned home to build a garden.
In June of the 30th year of Daoguang (1850), Hong Xiuquan revolted in Jintian. Zhang Jingxiu was ordered to recruit 300 soldiers in Dongguan and went to Guangxi to fight in the first month of the first year of Xianfeng (1851). Because of his merits in relieving the siege of Xiangzhou, in May of that year, he was appointed as the prefect of Xun Prefecture, and in the first month of the second year of Xianfeng, he was also appointed as the Right River Soldier. Later, for his meritorious efforts in suppressing the peasant rebel army, he was promoted to guangxi envoy. In the fifth year of Xianfeng (1855), Chen Kai and Li Wenmao's rebel army advanced toward Guangxi, and the Xunzhou rebel army responded, capturing the prefecture and besieging Wuzhou. Zhang Jingxiu was ordered to lead an army to fight with it, but it could not be held. Later, the rebel army conquered Xunzhou and established the State of Dacheng there. As a result, he was dismissed from his post, and the Governor of Guangdong, Ye Mingchen, remained in the army. In the spring of the following year, he marched into the Xun River, and while supervising the battle on the ship, he was hit in the right leg by a shell, and was defeated and retreated to Pingnan, so he resigned again and returned to his hometown on the grounds of injury and illness.
In May of the eighth year of Xianfeng (1858), Huang Zonghan, the governor of Guangdong, appointed Zhang Jingxiu to oversee the dongjiang army. In February of the ninth year of Xianfeng, Shi Dakai, the king of Yi, led his troops into Guangdong and captured Jiaying Prefecture. Huang Zonghan oversaw the suppression, and Zhang Jingxiu led an army to set up an ambush, defeated the Taiping Army, and was reinstated as a battle officer. Soon, he acted as an envoy to Jiangxi, Xianfeng for eleven years, and also served as a political envoy in Jiangxi, and then returned to Dongguan due to illness. In the first month of the third year of Tongzhi (1864), he died of illness in Keyuan at the age of 42.
Zhang Jingxiu is at home on weekdays, likes to paint plums and orchids, and his pen and ink are detached; his poems are elegant, and his poems are more than yonglan and yongmei, and he is the author of "Leftover Grass in The Garden". After he threw his pen from Rong, Jinshi calligraphy and painting, qinqi poetry and fu were still proficient. When he was in Keyuan Garden, he often invited poets Zhang Weiping, Xiucai Jian Shiliang, And The Famous Jinshi artist Xu Sangeng to join hands in the garden to chant, praise, and pass on their art. The ancestors of the Lingnan School of Painting, Ju Lian and Ju Chao, who painted for ten years, created flower and bird paintings with boneless method, powder collision method, and water collision method and taught Gao Disciple, and his students Gao Jianfu, Gao Qifeng, Chen Shuren, etc. founded the Lingnan School of Painting, making Keyuan one of the sources of the Lingnan School.