In 1898 (the twenty-fourth year of Guangxu), Tan Sitong participated in the Penghu Reform Law. After the failure of the reform, he bravely rebelled on September 28, 1898 (the 24th year of Guangxu) at the Caishikou Execution Ground outside Xuanwu Gate in Beijing, at the age of 33. At the same time, the restorationists who were also killed were Lin Xu, Yang Shenxiu, Liu Guangdi, Yang Rui, and Kang Guangren, and the six were also called "the six gentlemen of Penghu".
Have the heart to kill thieves, and are powerless to return to heaven; Die where you want, hurry up!
After chanting slogans, Tan Sitong chanted a desperate poem and then died under the knife of an axeman. In 1899 (the twenty-fifth year of Guangxu), his remains were transported back to his original home and buried under the stone mountain outside Liuyang City, Hunan.
This passionate desperate poem is written by Tan Sitong, a zhishi in the Penghu Transformation Law. In history textbooks, the content of this poem is the version of Liang Qichao's Tan Si Tong Biography, which reads:
Looking at the door to stop Thinking Zhang Jian, he endured death and waited for Dugan. I smiled at the sky with a horizontal knife and went to leave the liver and gallbladder for two kunluns.
As for whether this "Inscription Wall in Prison" was left by Tan Sitong, there are many opinions in the historical circles. One theory holds that the Seven-Word version of the Inscription Wall in Prison was not made by Tan Sitong, but a version that Liang Qichao tampered with when he passed it on. Huang Zhangjian, who holds this view, questioned it in his article "On the Transformation of Liang Qichao's Inscription Poems in The Prison of Tan Sitong". Huang Zhangjian believes that this poem was not written on the wall by Tan Sitong in prison, but was written by Liang Qichao under the guise of it.
Why did Huang Zhangjian decide that the poem was a forgery?
The evidence he gave was a novel published in 1908 called Embroidery of Kang Liang. This novel, published ten years after Tan Sitong's inauguration, mentions such a detail in the novel. Before his execution, Lin Xu, one of the Six Gentlemen, recited a poem that read:
Looking at the door to pity Zhang Jian, he directly advised Chen Shu to shame Dugen. Throwing a knife in his hand, he smiled at the sky and left the public guilty posterity.
Judging from the structure and usage of this poem, the poem is similar to the structure and dictionary of the "Inscription Wall in Prison" that appears in the "Tan Si Tong Biography". Therefore, Huang Zhangjian believed that the poems in Liang Qichao's book were forgeries.
So why is Huang Zhangjian so convinced that this poem is a forgery of Liang Qichao?
Huang Zhangjian believes that the original version of "Inscription Wall in Prison" leaked a secret about the penghu change method. In order to cover up some facts, Liang Qichao used the Spring and Autumn Brushwork and modified the original poem. It has to be said that if this statement is true, then Liang Qichao's revised version does read more boldly than the original. However, although this revision added more emotional color to the poem, it went against the original wishes of the martyrs of Wushu and also covered up some secrets that really happened during the Penghu Reform.
Huang Zhangjian believes that this change is to cover up the fact that the reformists have secretly launched a conspiracy to seize power by force. Because Kang and Liang did not have the great righteousness of Tan Sitong's "theory of leaving the public guilt behind", and they chose to retreat in the face of great right and wrong, Liang Qichao made a drastic modification to this poem. Obviously, Huang Zhangjian's statement has determined that Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao are out-and-out hypocrites. Tan Sitong's poems reveal some unknown facts, so Liang Qichao will hide them.
It is worth mentioning that the work "Towards the Republic" follows this saying. In this play, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao's apprentices were immediately refuted by Wang Zhao when they made the manuscript public. Wang Zhao recognized at a glance that the edict had been forged by the two men, and that Tan Sitong's poem had also been tampered with. The "public sin" in the original sentence of this poem naturally refers to the crime of some people arbitrarily deciding to launch a palace coup in the Summer Palace.
Of course, whether this poem was left by Tan Sitong or not, there are still many different voices in the field of history.
For example, Fu Jianping believes that there are many loopholes in Huang Zhangjian's statement that still need to be considered. It is doubtful whether the desperate poem that Lin Xu chanted on the execution ground was the original work left by Tan Sitong in prison. Since it is impossible to confirm even this point, it is impossible to verify what the "original" content of the "Prison Inscription Wall" is, and the inference about this is naturally untenable. If you want to study Tan Sitong's "Prison Inscription Wall", you must jump out of the barrier of old interpretation of poetry.
In addition, there is another theory in the academic circles, that is, the poems written by Liang Qichao are indeed the original poems of Tan Sitong, but some words and sentences have been modified. Scholars who support this statement looked up the "Liu'an Japanese Banknote" written by Tang Xuan, the chief of the Penghu Nian Punishment Department, which featured Tan Sitong's inscription on the prison wall in this private diary. The original text in the diary reads like this:
"Twenty-five days, sunny, signed ... After Zhu Junyun: Tan Xiangsi Tong was arrested, Shi Yun: Wangmen stayed with his neighbor Zhang Jian, and endured death to wait for the roots of the tree. I smiled at the sky with a horizontal knife and went to leave the liver and gallbladder for two kunluns. ”
It can be seen from here that this version of the "Inscription Wall in Prison" is basically the same as the poem that appears in the "Tan Si Tong Biography", with only a few typos. The reason why Liang Qichao was able to obtain Tan Sitong's posthumous work is that according to the "Liu'an Nichi Banknote", tan Sitong did write this poem on the wall, and this poem appears in many manuscripts of the Punishment Department. Based on this clue, it continues to infer that the information channels obtained by Liang Qichao should have been inquired about from within the criminal deployment.
As for which of these statements is true, the author prefers the last one. After all, this statement has physical evidence such as the "Rukuan Japanese Banknote", which is more credible.
Resources:
["Inscription Wall in Prison", "Tan Si Tong Biography", "Liu'an Japanese Banknote"]