During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Qi clan of Sizhou Zhaoxian Li (in the area of present-day Xuyi Baoji and Tiefo) was a large family with four famous people, three generations of imperial officials, fathers and sons, and famous scholars and poets emerged, which have influenced to this day. The author recently visited Mr. Qi Yuqi, a descendant of Qi Tianguan, and learned a lot of new information. Qi Yuqi, the 19th grandson of the Qi clan of the Qi Dynasty, joined the revolutionary work in 1944, and insisted on studying ancient poetry after retiring in 1982, publishing many works. His poems "Search History" and "Fog" were included in the "Thousand Family Poems of Sino-Japanese Friendship" and received praise.
Ancestral residence Shengli, the leader of the family to prosper Qi Ang
The Sizhou Qi clan has a complete family tree, so the lineage is very clear. The Qi clan ancestral home was In Qufu, the hometown of Confucius in Shandong, and later moved to Jun Prefecture (present-day Yuzhou City, Henan), and then to Huaiyin Caowan. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, he escaped the unrest of the Red Turban Army and moved from Caowan to Sizhou. On the family tree, there is the name of Qi Jiguang, a famous general who was a descendant of the Qi clan who moved to Dengzhou, Shandong, and originated from the same clan as the Sizhou Qi clan. In addition, there are three branches of Xuancheng in Anhui, Jiangyin in Jiangsu and Xiushui in Zhejiang, all from the hometown of Confucius.
The ancestor of Qiansi Prefecture was named Qi Ren, who abandoned his official post and returned to the field due to turmoil at the end of the Yuan Dynasty; the second ancestor Qi Was tall and mighty, with excellent arm strength, participated in the Battle of Jingnan initiated by Zhu Di, the king of Yan, and awarded hundreds of households with military merit, and later dereliction of duty due to mistakes. The Qi clan of Sizhou made a living from farming, and by the sixth generation, Zu Qi Ang began to rise. Qi Ang, the word Dade, nicknamed Donghu, has three elder brothers, lost his mother at the age of seven, and has the ambition to study at a young age, and his speech and behavior are different. In 1523, there was a famine in Sizhou, and the people's lives were difficult, and the government still urged the delivery of grain. The grain delivery deadline had passed, and Qi Ang's father was at a loss; the government issued a notice of fine grain and stones, making him even more depressed and unable to eat for several consecutive days. At that time, the brothers had separated from each other and did not care for each other. Qi Ang repeatedly comforted his father, but to no avail, so he personally went to Sizhou Yamen Chen to tell the truth. Xue Zhizhou listened to his statement, nodded his head repeatedly, and not only waived the fine grain, but also agreed to his family's suspension of grain delivery, and even asked him to go to Yamen as an errand boy. Qi Ang has lofty ambitions and wants to enter the state to study as a talent and take the road of examination. Xue Zhizhou repeatedly persuaded, so he went home and rolled up the covers and came to the state gate, starting from the lowest errand, this year he was 21 years old. He studied cultural knowledge in his spare time, and after years of hard work, he finally passed the examination and was promoted to Sizhou Wei Lingshi with honors.
At that time, the imperial court recruited a local examination officer, Jiajing Xindi (1531), and Qi Ang became the first imperial official of the Qi family because he was proficient in Daming law and took the post of capital history of the Punishment Department. Four years later, he was transferred to the Right Army's capital Yanshan Shenwuwei as a grain collection experience officer, at the age of thirty-four, rich and handsome, talented and intelligent, and many officials had achievements. Grain collection experience belongs to the household department, and the military grain handled every year is tens of millions of catties, which is extremely difficult to perform, and there are often people in this position who are imprisoned for mistakes or corruption. He worked diligently and carefully, without the slightest error, and his colleagues were amazed. At one time, there was a discrepancy in the amount of official grain transferred by more than a dozen people from a large household, and the household department planned to punish them as a prisoner of self-theft, and their colleagues all knew that they had been wronged, and they were afraid of being implicated and were unwilling to defend them. Only Qi Ang stepped forward and explained the reasons, and these people finally escaped the disaster and were very grateful to Qi Ang. Once, when the army was transferring grain, there was red rotten grain at the bottom of the warehouse, and some soldiers who were usually dissatisfied took the opportunity to instigate trouble, and many soldiers who did not know the truth followed suit. The warehouse officials and grain stewards were so anxious that they were planning to commit suicide, and the household officials who came to understand the situation had no way to do anything. At this critical juncture, Qi Ang let people transport more than 100 stones of new grain from the granary of the courtyard next to them through the wall, and then turned the danger into a disaster. Afterwards, the people who took the lead in making trouble were secretly visited and brought to justice, and since then, no one up and down the Shenwu Guards has not admired Qi Ang's courage. Hubu Shangshu Li Tingxiang praised: "Qi Ang Linshi zhi is brave and spoke, and it is really not simple to ring out the group of officials. "From then on, he was treated with special courtesy. The new granary and the storage and transportation of cao storage were asked by his superiors to plan, and he contributed a lot. Colleagues are keen to pull relationships and send money for promotion, and Qi Ang is dismissive of this. He saw that some people with white hair were still far away from home and were running away from home in the fly camp in the capital to seek officials, so he said, "Why don't you suffer for the sake of your children and grandchildren?" If I have a gray hair, I will resign and return to my hometown, accumulate books to teach my children and grandchildren, and be a model of rural customs by being diligent and good, which is a happy thing, why should I be old and love the official? One day, he suddenly found that a white hair grew on his head, and immediately wrote to resign, colleagues did not understand, repeated dissuasion was ineffective. Li Shangshu said to him, "Your talents have not yet been brought into play, so why will they be revealed to your descendants?" "This year, he was only forty-four years old, which is the age of being rich and powerful in the official arena.
Three generations of imperial officials, father and son, famous in all directions
As soon as Qi Ang arrived home, the appointment letter of appointment of the imperial court appointing him as a Tongzhi of Tai'an Prefecture came down, and his colleagues all regretted him. Back in Sizhou, relatives and friends advised him to build more houses in the city to collect the city's profits, saying: "Li LingZhi is dim, this is not for future generations to consider." For more than twenty years, I have had some savings as an official in three places, enough to make ends meet. He lived in seclusion in the countryside, urged his sons to read, asked their sons to go to the teacher's house to study, and accompanied them to read until midnight at night before resting. When his son occasionally went out for a leisure or woke up late, he became angry; if he did not change, he rebuked him severely. At that time, many people entered the state school and became a showman, and if they could not pass the examination, they would no longer study from the teacher. After his sons became Xiucai, he let his sons go to Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou and other places to learn art at any cost. He had seven sons, four of whom became officials: the eldest son, Qi Xun (戚勳), a Gongshi (gongshi), who served as Tongzhi (同知) in Ruzhou, Henan; the third son, Qi Zhao (戚照), Gongsheng (公生), a county magistrate in Yongfeng County, Jiangxi; Qi Xi (陳熙), a county magistrate in Yongfeng County, Jiangxi; Qi Xi (陳熙), a county magistrate in Yongfeng County, Jiangxi; and the fifth son, Qi Jie ( Qi Jie ), who was most proud of him.
When Qi Jie was five years old, he studied with his father, never forgot it, and completed the "Three Character Classic" and "Hundred Family Names" in one year. At the age of six, he studied with a master and spent two years fighting to conquer the "Filial Piety Classic" and "Zhongyong". At the age of nine, he had completed the four books, could explain the great meaning of the four books, learned to write the imperial examination articles, and mastered the essentials of combining inheritance and transformation with breaking and standing. At the age of ten, he learned "Mao Poems", wrote poems and filled in words, passed through five tones and six laws, and wrote a fountain of thought, and he was known as a prodigy. Thirteen-year-old Zhongxiucai, nineteen-year-old Zhongju, twenty-year-old Zhongjinshi, was one of the few young jinshi in the Ming Dynasty. Qi Jie was young with the Hired Hua family, and later The Hua family became seriously ill and was bedridden for a long time, and the Hua family took the initiative to request the dissolution of the marriage contract, which was rejected by Qi Jie, which was recorded in Fang Zhi and has been praised to this day. After zhongjinshi, some princes and nobles in the capital learned that he was unmarried, and with the promise of a high-ranking official Houlu, they wanted to recruit him as a son-in-law, but he refused. The emperor specially approved the holiday, let him return to his hometown to complete the marriage, and Qi Jinshi was ordered to return to his hometown to marry his wife, which became a sensation in the news in the capital. Later, Qi Jie served as the new Cai County Order, honest and loyal to his duties, and was praised as the best county order of the Ming Dynasty for the second consecutive time in a year. Three years later, he was directly transferred from Zhixian to the post of official, and was the first chief of the Inspectorate, then the fourth division, and finally promoted to the rank of Kao gong Shi Langzhong. Officials, commonly known as Heavenly Officials, hold the power of appointing and removing officials and transferring them, and those who are in cahoots crowd the door, but Qi Jie never favors personal feelings, he diligently serves the public, and all those who run away from officials and give gifts are rejected. He never sought personal gain for his relatives and friends. Every time he wrote a letter, he would warn his family not to interfere in the affairs of the state and county, not to receive past officials, not to be entrusted by others, and not to accept congratulatory gifts. Father Qi Ang was very strict with his relatives, and he strictly refused to ask for help, sometimes said that he was sick and avoided, and usually did not associate with local officials.
Qi Jie's youngest son is named Qi Shen. Once, on the streets of Beijing, a fortune teller looked at Qi Shen in Qi Jie's arms, stroked his small head with his hand, and said: "This son is full of heaven and the feet of the earth are square, and he will be a noble person in the future!" Unfortunately, Qi Jie could not see this day. When Qi Shen was two years old, Qi Jie suddenly died of illness due to overwork at the age of 32. Soon after, his grandfather Qi Ang died of excessive grief. Qi Jie's three underage sons were all raised by the Zhao clan. Zhao was born in a family of officials and eunuchs, knew the books and reason, and resolutely shouldered the heavy responsibility of supporting his mother-in-law and raising orphans. She cut back on food and clothing, taught by example, asked famous teachers to educate her son, and never skimped on money. Qi Shen is the smartest, has the style of a father, enrolled in school at the age of six, at the age of eight has been able to write works with literary talent, fourteen years old in the middle of the talent, eighteen years old to become a state school public fund student, every exam is the first, twenty-four years old to become a Gongsheng, but since then for a long time repeatedly failed, hard for twenty years, is still a student. He did not lose his heart, and studied hard for three years in the tomb of his parents on the Sage Mountain, and finally won the move; after that, he studied hard for ten years, and finally became a jinshi, serving as the chief of the household department, and two years later, he was transferred to the jiangnan Hushu Guanguan, interpreting the good story of three generations of imperial officials and fathers and sons, so it was praised by people for hundreds of years.
The influence of the Qi clan - famous eunuchs, famous scholars and poets
Qi Jie had no bad habits in his life, but he loved to buy books and read books, and his family had more than 10,000 volumes of books. He was in the imperial court and did many good deeds for his hometown. In the fifth year of Longqing, Cai Yingyang appointed Yang to patrol The Northern Jiangsu Prefecture, and he instructed him to repair the city of Sizhou, and the city of Sizhou was completely repaired. In the fourth year of the Wanli Calendar, Qi Jie, who was sick and insisted on his post, remembered the flood control affairs in Sizhou, and heard that Xu Ao would go to Sizhou to inspect, and specially asked two things: one was to build a flood control levee, and the other was to build the Zunjing Pavilion to provide a place for young people to study. In order to commemorate his merits, the people of his hometown once set up a stone monument place named "Tianxiang" and a "Qi Officials Ancestral Hall" in Sizhou City to commemorate him. There is a biography of him in the Sizhou Chronicle, and he is praised as a famous eunuch. Over the past four hundred years, many of his stories have been widely circulated in the former Sizhou territories such as Xuyi, Sihong, and Wuhe, and are well known to everyone.
Qi Shen, a disciple of Professor Yuxiang in his later years, devoted himself to writing, because of excessive use of his eyes, he was almost blind in his later years, still reading more than once, and wrote a large number of works, which was a famous scholar in the late Ming Dynasty, known as the "Seven Talents of the Central Plains". At that time, he published and distributed more than twenty volumes of "Dacheng Xinyin" and ten volumes of "Complete Works of the Earth", as well as "Jingshu Cheng Mo Dingzong", "Di Li Qi Tan", "Huguan Ri ji chasing Zi Honglie", "Deletion of The Buddha's Treasure Tao Chang XiangLu", "Guan Sheng's Signature", "Good Self's Words", "Song of Du Yu", "Ming Liang Sheng Calculation", "Imperial Township Famous Offerings", "Imperial Township Reconstruction Four Books", and "Soldier's Salary", and the manuscripts that had not had time to be engraved were more than ten volumes of "Four Books of Confused Words" and more than ten volumes of "Hua Ge Tan Jing". These books were widely disseminated at the time, and many readers benefited from them. Today, Qi Shen's works are also valued by the academic community, such as the five volumes of the Chongzhen Three-Year Engraving "Emperor Xiang Qi Family Inheritance Of the Lotus Sutra Dacheng Heart Seal" collected by the Beijing Library, which is an important reference material for the study of Ming Dynasty poetry and classics, and has been often cited by today's scholars.
Qi Shen's son Qi Yan was a famous poet during the Kangxi Dynasty, with 25 volumes of the "Laughing Gate Poetry Collection" and 30 volumes of the "Sizhou Tongzhi". His poetry was highly praised by Wang Shizhen, the master of the literary circles at that time, and Li Tianfu, a scholar of wuyingdian university in the Kangxi Dynasty (丞相), personally wrote a preface to Qi Yan's poetry collection, saying that his poetic language was good at innovation and did not fall into obscurity. In modern times, Shen Zengzhiyun, a master of the same light body, loved Qi Jue's poetry and gave it a very high evaluation. Xu Shichang, president of the National Congress of the Republic of China, commented on his poems: "Lyrical spirit, stirrups change, no words are sent to people under the fence", affirming that he is a poet with innovative consciousness and achievements.