Chen Baozhen is the grandfather of Mr. Chen Yinke, the character is true, the number of the right ming, in his later years he called himself "the old man of the four senses". He was resourceful and practical. When Zeng Guofan was stationed in Anqing, the governor of Liangjiang, treated Chen Baozhen as his guest, regarded him as a "Hai Nei Qishi", and gave a couplet to this young descendant, which showed his great importance. Chen Baozhen did two major things in his lifetime: he built a strategy for Xi Baotian, captured Hong Tianguifu, the young lord of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the chancellor Hong Renjiu; he approved of the restoration and reform of the law, recommended Liu Guangdi and Yang Rui to assist in the new policy, and worked hard to govern the governor of Hunan, opened schools, ran newspapers, and revitalized industries, bravely being the first in the world, and becoming the mainstay of the restoration faction.
After the failure of the Penghu Reform Law, Chen Baozhen was punished with "dismissal from his post and never use it" for the crime of "attracting adultery and evil." Soon, the deposed Father and Son of Chen Baozhen and Chen Sanli left the Hunan Inspectorate with their families and moved to their hometown in Jiangxi. Chen Yinke was 9 years old at the time.
For this treatment of the imperial court, Chen Yinke, in the "Dream of Han Liu Tang", believes that it is "caused by Rong Lu and Wang Yuanhe kowtowing and begging". He wrote: "The Qing Dynasty was not very obvious, and the middle was even more stumbling, and the Eight Barnyards were abolished. When he was over sixty years old, he had to patrol the small province of Hunan. After reigning for only three years, he was severely reprimanded. ”
However, Cixi was still uneasy and worried about Chen Baozhen's comeback, and between the spring and summer of the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu (1900), he sent someone to deliver the secret message and give Chen Baozhen to commit suicide. North of Baozhen, he was commanded and hanged himself. Seeing that he was dead, in order to regain his life, the inspector ordered his throat bone to be taken and reported to the empress. Poor generation of talents in the history of the late Qing Dynasty finally failed to escape the clutches of the Nala clan.
Chen Baozhen was killed, and Cixi showed no mercy to the reform measures of the Hunan New Deal, and ordered Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang: "The name of the Southern Society and the Security Bureau has been newly established in the city of Hunan Province, and the traces of the party should be abolished at the same time." All the books in the meeting, such as covenants, expositions, notes, and answers, are destroyed to the root. Zhang Zhidong quickly complied. "The hunan new policy, which is famous at home and abroad, has been tragically stopped, punished, and destroyed.
Faced with such an ending, Chen Sanli was extremely sad. In fact, the people who are distressed by fathers and sons are not their own resignation and loss of office, but the desire to reform and strive to be strong, and the desire of "a corner of the camp for the prosperity of the world" has been destroyed.
At the time of Chen Baozhen's death, although his grandson Chen Yinke was only 11 years old and still had a superficial understanding of the impermanence of life, he was already deeply influenced by his grandfather and father.
Chen Yinke had this self-description of his grandfather in "The Dream of Han Liu Tang": "During the decades of the Qing Dynasty, the Zhi Han family had many relations with various parties in the government and the opposition, and there was no reason for it. The ancestors were only in the middle of the B branch, and they raised their relatives poorly in the family, and they had no choice but to take office. ”
For his grandfather, Chen Yinke has a high evaluation and respect, and whenever he talks about his grandfather in the "Hanliutang Collection", he naturally reveals the meaning of complaining for his grandfather. He believed that his grandfather was the governor of Hunan and "only had a small province", and in Chen Yinke's eyes, being a provincial governor was not an official, and with his grandfather's talent and ability, the cabinet prime minister who was the most official was not excessive.
However, one thing is certain, after Chen Baozhen's father and son were severely punished unfairly by the imperial court, the attitude of Chen Baozhen's family in life took a major turn, and they no longer took winning meritorious fame and making meritorious achievements as their life orientation, but put their eyes on the pursuit of learning.
There is no doubt that this is also the reason why Chen Yinke later became the foreshadowing of a generation of literary and historical masters.