Now people in the three provinces of Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Fujian still remember that there was once a "Ding Qingtian" there, who served as a zhi county in Wan'an, Jiangxi for four months, and when he was promoted, "fathers and sons set up seats for food, and tens of thousands of people gave incense to them." When the Inspector of Jiangsu cleaned up the backlog of 270,000 cases in three years, he wisely cracked the "case of the groom's disappearance", "the case of the adulteress killing her husband", and the "case of blood testing to prove the father", which was widely praised by people in the compilation of commentaries. During his tenure as inspector of Fujian, he personally opened a warehouse to let tens of thousands of people live, so he had the title of "Life-Saving Benefactor Ding Qingtian", which was as famous as Di Renjie, Bao Zheng, and Liu Luoguo.
This "Ding Qingtian" is named Ding Richang, the character is Jingjing, the nickname is Yusheng, alias Yusheng, a native of Fengshun County, Guangdong Province. He successively served as a Confucian instructor in Qiongzhou Prefecture, Guangdong, a commander in Wan'an County, Jiangxi, a Luling County Order, a Susong Taidaotai, an envoy to Lianghuai Salt Transport, a political envoy to Jiangsu, a governor of Jiangsu, a minister of shipping administration in Fuzhou, a governor of Fujian, a governor of coastal defense, a coastal water master, and a minister in charge of state affairs.
When Ding Richang was the governor of Fujian, the British missionaries continued to encroach on the people's fields, and the enraged Fujian people burned the church of the "foreign monk" with a torch. Everyone knows that the "foreigners" were very arrogant in those years, and they wanted to enjoy "supranational treatment." As soon as they saw that the old nest was destroyed, they naturally refused to take a break, so they ran to Ding Richang to "ask for explanations." However, he did not know that Ding Richang, a veteran of handling cases, had already made preparations, collected a large amount of evidence that "foreign monks" had embezzled the land of the villagers, and then ignored the "translations" of those "foreign monks" and the traitors of the fox and tiger Wei, directly negotiated with the British consul in Fuzhou, and finally drove all the "foreign monks" out of the city -- this was the famous "Wushishan Teaching Case" at that time, and it was also a rare foreign dispute in the late Qing Dynasty, and the fujian people erected a stone to commemorate it.
Although it dealt a blow to the arrogance of the foreigners, unlike those Manchu Qing nobles who only knew how to oppress the people and "measure the material resources of China and the happiness of the country", Ding Richang also felt the helplessness of "weak countries without diplomacy" when dealing with foreigners. For this reason, when he chatted with his friends, he was distressed: when dealing with the great powers, we cannot count on international axioms at all, we can only rely on our own strength, if our national strength is stronger than the other side, then our reasoning makes sense, and foreign countries cannot tell us what to do; if our national strength is not as good as the other side, then even if it is reasonable, there is no place to say. Only after our national strength is strong enough, foreigners know that they can't beat us, so naturally they don't dare to bully people.
It is a pity that Ding Ruchang has been looking forward to it all his life, and he has not seen the day when the national strength is strong, watching the mountains and rivers shatter and the foreigners running rampant, he is not a foreigner who has been governed by him, he is a foreigner who dares to run amok, and the local government is also humble to the "international friends", the foreigners beat the countrymen, the chinese people must dare to resist and fight back, the messengers first "comforted" the foreigners, then put the countrymen in prison, and also had to "compensate" the foreigners for medical expenses, this situation continued for a long time after Ding Richang's death.
So Ding Richang's last words predicted: We have British India in the west, Annam controlled by France in the south, and polar bear Russia in the north, these three countries border us, and will eventually encroach on our land; and the Japan in the east is not honest, "cunning thinking, waiting for the gap", Ryukyu will inevitably be lost, and Siam (Thailand) and Burma will also be robbed by Britain, Tsarist Russia will also compete with Japan for hegemony in the East China Sea, Goryeo will either defect to Japan or defect to Czarist Russia, "Goryeo will not be trampled on Russia", But then we don't even have a vassal state. And without these vassal states, we will be enemies on all sides, and the borders will never be peaceful.
Ding Richang's predictions were unfortunately in his words, but his suggestion that "we should try to be practical and not to talk about empty talk" was not only ignored by the corrupt Manchu Qing government, but also by many people of insight who "knew it by the elite", but also took Ding Richang's words as a side-deaf ear, and Ding Richang's wish of "unifying Jin Ou and daring all nations not to be deceived" was not realized until the fall of the Qing Dynasty...