Stories about characters during the Ming and Qing dynasties

At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, there was a young man named Wang Mian in a village in Zhuji County. Because his family was poor, he had been herding cattle for others since he was a child. He was smart, enlightened, diligent and studious. The lotus he painted was lifelike and ready to be drawn, and he Well-read and talented.

He is unwilling to make friends, let alone seek fame and fortune.

The county magistrate came to visit, but he avoided seeing him; Zhu Yuanzhang offered him the position of "consulting for joining the army," but he did not accept it and willingly fled to the Kuaiji Mountains to live an anonymous life.

When the Ming Dynasty was founded, the system of selecting scholars in the form of eight-legged essays was implemented. Wang Mian couldn't help but sigh: Not only will this system of selecting scholars in the form of eight-part essays not be able to select real talents for the country, but I am afraid that the only scholars in the future will be like this. Therefore, they will take the principles of learning, morality, officialdom, and retirement lightly.

This is a generation of literati who have encountered bad luck! Wang Mian was a hermit who opposed the stereotyped recruitment of scholars and was willing to live in poverty. However, in the society at that time, there were too few people like Wang Mian.

During the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty, which was a hundred years after Wang Mian's death, the literati followed a wrong path obsessed with imperial examination fame.

In the late Chenghua years of Emperor Xianzong of the Ming Dynasty, there was a teacher named Zhou Jin in Wenshang County, Yanzhou Prefecture, Shandong Province. In order to get ahead and honor his hometown, he took the imperial examinations many times. However, he was over 60 years old and failed to succeed. Not even a scholar was admitted.

One day, he and his brother-in-law came to the provincial capital and walked into the Gongyuan.

He was so moved by the scene that he was so sad that he hit his head on the signal board and fell unconscious. After being rescued, he rolled on the ground and cried so much that blood flowed from his mouth.

Several businessmen saw that he was very pitiful, so they collected two hundred taels of silver and donated a prison student for him.

He immediately kowtowed to everyone and said, "I, Zhou Jin, can transform myself into a donkey and a horse, but I must do the same!"

Soon, Zhou Jin passed the examination with his qualifications as a supervisor. .

In an instant, people who were not relatives came to recognize him as relatives, and people who were not friends came to recognize him as friends. Even the school where he taught actually enshrined the "immortality tablet" of "Mr. Zhou" .

A few years later, he won the Jinshi again, was promoted to the imperial censor, and was assigned to study Taoism in Guangdong.

In Guangzhou, Zhou Jin discovered Fan Jin.

In order to take care of this 54-year-old boy, he read Fan Jin's paper three times and finally found that it was the best article in the world, word for word, so he promoted Fan Jin to a scholar. .

Not long after that, Fan Jin took the exam again and won the exam.

At that time, because Fan Jin was in a similar situation to Zhou Jin, he was looked down upon at home. His wife yelled at him, and his father-in-law scolded him in every possible way.

When Fan Jin's family was worrying about being unable to uncover the pot and waiting to sell chickens for rice, the good news came that Fan Jin had passed the national examination. Fan Jin was found from the market. After learning the good news, he was so happy that Crazy.

Fortunately, his father-in-law, Tutu Hu, slapped him and woke him up, curing him of his madness.

In the blink of an eye, things turned around for Fan Jin. Not only did he have money, rice, and a house, but he also had slaves and maids.

Seeing this, Fan Jin's mother was so happy that her chest suddenly became breathless, and she died in the west.

Butcher Hu was also uncharacteristically saying that he had known for a long time that his son-in-law was a descendant of Wenquxing and would not be like ordinary people. He was even more respectful to Fan Jin.

Later, Fan entered the capital to meet Zhou Jin. He was recommended as a Jinshi by Zhou Jin and was appointed as a scholar in Shandong.

Although Fan Jin became prosperous with his eight-part essay, he was only familiar with the Four Books and Five Classics.

When others mentioned Su Shi, the literary giant of the Northern Song Dynasty, he thought he was a scholar from the Ming Dynasty, which made a huge joke.

The imperial examination system not only cultivated a group of mediocre people, but also fostered a group of corrupt officials.

Jinshi Wang Hui was appointed as the prefect of Nanchang. The first thing he did when he took office was not to inquire about the local security, the livelihood of the people, or the grievances of the case, but to inquire about local customs and learn about local specialties. , What can be accommodated in various cases? Then he ordered a number one treasurer, passed all the six-room book offices in the yamen together, asked about the remaining profits of each errand, and asked everyone to return the money to the public.

From then on, the yamen was filled with the sound of clasps, abacus, and boards all day long.

The government officials and the people were beaten to the point of being beaten to death, and they were all shaking in their sleep.

But his personal creed is "Three years to clear the prefecture, one hundred thousand snowflakes and silver."

When the imperial court inspected his political achievements, they unanimously believed that he was "the most capable person in Jiangxi."

Tang Feng, the magistrate of Gaoyao County, strictly enforced various imperial decrees in order to show that he was clean and honest in government.

The imperial court had a ban on killing farm cattle. Tang Feng, without asking the reason, actually shackled Mr. ***, a beef businessman, to death. The people were filled with indignation and went on strike to stop the market.

After the incident.

Not only did the Yinchasi not punish Tang Feng, but he accused the victim of "treacherous men holding the government hostage and shackles according to the law."

Such an "incorruptible" magistrate actually plundered eight thousand taels of silver in one year.

Officials were corrupt and perverted the law, and under the eight-part imperial examination, local tyrants and evil gentry also ran amok.

Zhang Jingzhai, who was born in Juren, is a tyrant in the South China Sea.

He colluded with the government and took advantage of others.

In order to seize the temple's property, he instigated seven or eight gangsters to falsely accuse the monk of adultery with a woman, so that the monk was brought to court without any explanation.

Yan Zhihe, a supervisor in Gaoyao County, is a rich man who regards money as everything and has a huge fortune.

He was so sick that he couldn't eat, was bedridden, and was dying. He still kept thinking about harvesting early rice in the fields, and sent the servants who were in charge of the village to go to the countryside. He was worried and just impatient.

He was stingy by nature, and his family had a barn with rotten rice and a row of cattle and horses. However, he was reluctant to buy a pound of pork in normal times. When he was dying, he still refused to die because there was an extra light bulb in the lamp.

His elder brother Gongsheng Yan Zhizhong is even more of a villain running rampant in the countryside.

He forcibly penned the pigs belonging to his neighbor Wang Xiaoer, and when others came to ask for them, he committed murder and broke the legs of Wang Xiaoer's brother.

He went around blackmailing people, not lending money to others, but forcing them to pay interest; he threatened the boatman by calling the cloud cake a valuable medicine, and lost a few cents of the boat money.

After Yan Jiansheng's death, as his elder brother, he forced his sister-in-law to adopt his second son as his son, and attempted to seize his brother's property. He also claimed that this was "a rightful title. We, a squire family, these great gifts , but there is no room for error."

The imperial examination system created a group of social worms and poisoned the entire society.

There was a farmer named Kuang Chaoren in Yueqing County, Wenzhou Prefecture. He was originally simple and honest.

In order to support his parents, he went out to do small business and lived in Hangzhou.

Later I met Mr. Ma Er, who chose to print the eight-legged essay.

Mr. Ma Er gave him ten taels of silver and advised him to study and make progress.

After Kuang Chaoren returned home, he did small business while studying eight-part essay. Soon he was appreciated by Li Zhixian and was promoted to be a scholar.

In order to pursue higher fame and wealth, he worked harder to learn and write eight-part essay.

Unexpectedly, something happened to the county magistrate. To avoid being implicated, he fled to Hangzhou.

Here he met Jing Lanjiang, the owner of a scarf shop who pretended to be a celebrity, and Pan Sanye, an official in the government office, and learned the skills of taking exams on behalf of others and handling lawsuits.

Because of Mr. Ma Er’s relationship, he became the “selector” of eight-part essays, and boasted that he had printed 95 anthologies of eight-part essays, and everyone was vying to buy them. Every family enshrines "the shrine of the late Confucian Kuangzi" on their desks.

Soon after, the magistrate of Li County who had promoted him was vindicated and promoted to a capital official. Kuang Chaoren also followed him to the capital. In order to curry favor with the powerful, he abandoned his wife and son and became his mentor. The nephew's wife died in poverty in her hometown.

At this time, Mr. Pan, who had helped him, was imprisoned. Kuang Chaoren was afraid of affecting his reputation and future, so he cut off relations with Mr. Pan and refused to even take a look.

Not only was he ungrateful to Mr. Ma Er who had helped him, he also slandered and ridiculed him, completely degenerating into a beast in disguise who sold his soul.

The imperial examination system not only corrupted people, but was also an accomplice of feudal ethics.

Wang Yuhui, a poor scholar from Huizhou Prefecture who was over sixty years old, failed in the imperial examinations every year, but he always abided by the ethical code.

His third son-in-law died, and his daughter wanted to sacrifice her husband, but her parents-in-law refused.

Instead, he persuaded his in-laws to let his daughter die.

Then he said to his daughter: "My son, since you are like this, this is a matter of leaving your name in history. How can I stop you? Just do this.

"Eight days Later, when his daughter wore filial piety white clothes and died on a hunger strike, he looked up to the sky and laughed and said, "Good death! Good death!" But after the incident, when his daughter's spiritual tablet was sent to the Martyrs' Shrine for public sacrifice, he Suddenly I felt sad.

When he returned home and saw his old wife grieving, he couldn't bear it and left home to relax.

Along the way, he mourned his daughter and was in a state of panic. When he arrived at Huqiu, Suzhou, he saw a young woman in white on the boat. He suddenly thought of his daughter who had died as a husband in mourning clothes. He choked up in his heart and burst into tears. Get down.

All these trends that have been formed since the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty have intensified during the Wanli period.

Those who succeed in the examination are considered to have outstanding talents; those who fail in the examination will be regarded as stupid and incompetent.

Rich people talk about getting promoted and making a fortune, while poor and humble Confucian students talk about flattery and flattery.

The scholars have fallen and the society has become more corrupt.

It seems that if we want to find "odd people" who are not affected by the imperial examination stereotypes, we can only put aside the scholars and look at the common people.

Unexpectedly, a few strange people really appeared in the middle of the market.

One can write.

This man’s surname is Ji and his given name is Ya Nian. He has been homeless since he was a child and has always found a home in these temples.

His handwriting is the best, but he refuses to learn from the ancients' calligraphy. He just creates his own style and writes freely. He has a perverse personality, but if anyone asks him to write, he will do it. He would be happy if he fasted for a day and polished the ink himself for a day.

If he is unwilling, you can let him be a prince, general or prime minister and give him a large amount of money, but he will not even look at it.

He was unkempt, wearing a tattered straight jacket and a pair of tattered slippers.

After writing every day, I got money from others, and after eating for myself, I didn’t want the remaining money, and gave it to a poor person I didn’t know.

One day when it was snowing heavily, his rotten shoes stepped on the mud at his friend's house. His friend asked him to change his shoes, but he actually said that I can't sit in your house with these shoes? I'm sitting in your house, and I still think I'm flattering you.

Once, he saw a box of fine fragrant ink placed in the monk's room. Regardless of whether the person wanted to write or not, he just took it and wrote. When a powerful squire asked him to write, He actually yelled, "I'm not greedy for your money, I don't admire your power, and I don't want to borrow your light. How dare you ask me to write!"

Another one is selling match paper. of.

This man’s surname is Wang and his given name is Tai. He has loved playing Go since he was a child.

He had no way to make a living, so he went to Hujufu area every day to sell fire paper tubes.

On that day, there was a meeting at Miaoyi Temple.

General Wang Tai came in and met three or four senior officials, surrounded by two people playing chess.

Everyone looked down upon him at first, but as soon as they and Mrs. Wang played half a game, they had to admit defeat. Everyone was shocked and wanted to drag Mrs. Wang to drink.

Mrs. Wang laughed and said: "Where in the world is there such a happy thing as killing Yaqi! I killed Yaqi, and I felt so happy, and there was even food and wine there!" After that, haha Laughed loudly and left without looking back.

There are still hermits like them who are indifferent to fame and wealth in the market, but in the eyes of those high-ranking officials, pursuing fame and wealth is the right way.