Text/Zhao Xinfang
Fang Zongyuan ranked second among the Eight Greats of the Tang and Song Dynasties, and Han Yu and the ancient Cultural Revolution and new movement he initiated set off a wave of prose creation in the Tang Dynasty for a time, forming a style of prose style of the Eight Greats of the Tang and Song Dynasties, which was clear-boned, magnificent, and powerful.
Su Dongpo of the Song Dynasty had a high evaluation of Liu Zongyuan, saying that his articles were very rich in content and very beautiful to read, comparing his simple and sparse poetic style with Tao Yuanming, the great hermit of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which shows the high level of Liu Zongyuan's achievements. It is particularly worth mentioning that his personality is still high.
Liu Zongyuan was born in a family of eunuchs, and since the Northern Wei Dynasty, his ancestors have successively served as officials in the dynasty, and his father continued the family tradition and also obtained a position of supervising imperial history. Under the influence of the strong Confucian idea of joining the WTO, coupled with his mother's words and deeds, he developed a positive WTO entry mentality and standards of words and deeds very early on.
When Liu Zongyuan was born, the Tang Dynasty had already spent its prosperous years and was gradually declining. In 781, another large-scale war occurred after the "Anshi Rebellion", during which Liu Zongyuan's father served in Natsuguchi, and Liu Zongyuan defected to his father in order to escape the war. Natsuguchi was a battlefield contested between the officers and the rebels, and he witnessed the deep disasters brought to the common people by the warlords, which further strengthened his ideal of engaging in politics for the people. In 792, when Liu Zongyuan was 20 years old, he was elected as a gongsheng, and the following year he entered high school in one fell swoop, and entered his career from then on.
After Tang Shunzong succeeded to the throne, Wang Shuwen and others were used to carry out reforms, Liu Zongyuan and Wang Shuwen had the same political views and were good friends, and on wang Shuwen's recommendation, Liu Zongyuan was appointed by the imperial court as a member of the ceremonial department, responsible for the ceremonial, sacrificial and tribute affairs. He actively participated in the "Yongzhen Innovation" presided over by Wang Shuwen and known as the "Yongzhen Revolution". The main contents of the "Yongzhen Reform" were to strengthen the power of the imperial court, suppress the power of the local feudal towns and regain the power of the military; abolish the palace market and remove the eunuch leaders in charge of the five squares, such as the carving workshop, the crane square, the harrier square, the dog square, and the eagle square; to investigate and crack down on corrupt officials and corrupt officials in the imperial court and localities; and to rectify local taxes and directly manage them by the imperial court.
The struggle between the two political forces is extremely fierce. Tang Shunzong was a sick emperor, and as his illness worsened, he gradually lost control of the government, and the eunuch clique headed by Ju Wenzhen and the court ministers joined forces with some feudal towns to exert pressure on the imperial court, and the crown prince Li Chun supervised the country.
During Wang Shuwen's return home for the funeral due to the death of his mother, Tang Shunzong was given the throne to Li Chun by Emperor Di for Tang Xianzong. After Tang Xianzong succeeded to the throne, he completely rejected the "Yongzhen Reform", Wang Shuwen was given death, and Liu Zongyuan and others were all demoted and transferred.
Liu Zongyuan was demoted to Yongzhou as Sima (司馬). Yongzhou, located at the junction of Hunan, Guangdong and Guangxi, is very desolate and sparsely populated, and Liu Zongyuan took his mother, who was over sixty years old, to take office. Some local officials "look down on people with dog eyes" and bully him, and they actually do not arrange accommodation for him and ask him to find a way to solve it. The monks of the local temple were eager to help him and helped him temporarily arrange to live in the temple. Those who hated him also tried to frame him as a "freak."
The situation made Liu Zongyuan indignant and wrote the poem "Jiang Xue". I tried modern poetry to translate:
The birds of the snowy mountains are all gone,
There are no people walking in the strange road.
There is an old man in a cloak and a hat on a boat by the river,
Not afraid of the cold and lonely fishing quietly on the boat.
On the surface, the poem is a scene, but in fact, Liu Zongyuan compares himself to the anglers who are not afraid of the cold, and launches a counterattack against the politicians who exclude him, showing that he is willing to be poor and not afraid of people's words.
Liu Zongyuan, who had no power and no power in Yongzhou and was supervised by local officials, sent love to shanshui, looked around at the history of humanities, and wrote a large number of prose works, such as the famous "Eight Records of Yongzhou", and also wrote many poems singing about landscapes.
In 815, Liu Zongyuan, who was demoted to Yongzhou, spent ten years and received an edict to return to the capital. Tang Xianzong originally wanted to reuse him, but was fiercely opposed by the conservative ministers, so he had to send Liu Zongyuan to liuzhou instead. The Tang Dynasty Assassin was the highest magistrate of the area. During his four-year tenure as the Assassin of Liuzhou, Liu Zongyuan did a lot of good things for the local people.
Liuzhou was originally a barbaric land, and a cruel custom prevailed, the common people were afraid of life, pawning their children for money, but they could not pay the ransom when they were due, and the pawned children would be sold to others as slaves. Liu Zongyuan issued a decree to completely change this bad habit. It is stipulated that a person who has become a slave may, during the service of the creditor, calculate his wages according to the income of his labor, and may regain his freedom as long as the wages can satisfy the debts. This initiative was well received by the common people and later spread to other states and counties.
Liu Zongyuan was a diligent and political parent official, and when he saw that there was a large area of barren land outside Liuzhou City, he mobilized the common people to reclaim the land, adding a lot of arable land to the local area. He attaches great importance to afforestation and personally leads a team to the hillside to plant trees. Just like the current improvement of the urban environment, he personally arranged for the rectification of the streets and alleys in Liuzhou City, adopted the method of adapting measures to local conditions, and used some corner plots to open up natural landscapes and beautify the lives of ordinary people. He found that the sources of water for the people of Liuzhou were rainwater and river water, and there was no well water. Why not use well water? It turned out that the local people had never drilled a well since ancient times. He taught the people to dig wells and took several blows in the city. The fact that ordinary people can drink clean and sweet groundwater cannot but be said to be a great joy in life.
Liu Zongyuan realized that in order to fundamentally improve the quality of the common people, the key is to start with children and improve the level of cultural knowledge. After he took office, he personally founded a number of schools and adopted various methods to encourage children to read. In addition to busy work, special time is taken to receive young students who come to consult and patiently answer various questions they raise.
In 819, Liu Zongyuan died on his way back to the capital from Liuzhou. The people of Liuzhou specially built a Luochi Temple to commemorate him, and later this temple was renamed Liuhou Ancestral Hall, which is still there.
【About the author】Zhao Xinfang, pen name Zhao Shi, is a director of the Chongqing Miscellaneous Literature Association and a director of the Chongqing Nan'an District Writers Association.
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