Li Baojia

Li Boyuan

Li Boyuan (1867-1906), also known as Baojia, is the head of Nanting Pavilion. He was born in the sixth year of Tongzhi and died in the thirty second year of Guangxu. He was forty years old. Li Boyuan is a prolific writer. His quick thinking and quick writing are rare.

Character experience

Li Boyuan was born in a family of aristocratic officials. His grandfather, father and uncle all came from the imperial family. Some of them worked as local shepherds and supervisors, and some of them worked as cardinals in the capital. Boyuan was born in Shandong Province. When he was three years old, his father died and was raised by his cousin Li Nianzai. At that time, Nian was appointed as a Taoist priest of Shandong Province and a magistrate of Dongchang Prefecture. Boyuan grew up in Shandong with his uncle. My uncle was very strict with him. My mother was only a son, and she put all her efforts on him. Boyuan was intelligent and eager to learn since he was a child. He had a wide range of interests. In the dead of night, under the light of the moon, he continued to study. He is good at making poetry and Fu, painting and seal cutting, and knows the textual research of gold and stone. When he was young, he got a scholar and ranked first. However, he failed in the examination and was frustrated in his official career. This is of great significance to his later change of thought, his feeling of the darkness of officialdom and his courage to expose and denounce.

In 1892, Nianzai resigned from Shandong and returned to Changzhou. Boyuan's family returned to their hometown. At this time, the ancestral home at luowuba, by the Qingshan bridge outside the north gate, had been destroyed in the war, so he chose a house to live in Qingguo Lane in the city. Two years later, my uncle died.

In the 1890s, China was full of domestic and foreign troubles. The imperialists stepped up their aggression. The Manchu Qing rulers headed by Empress Dowager Cixi betrayed their country for glory and were corrupt and reactionary. After the invasion of Beijing by the Allied forces of the eight countries, the Sino Japanese War of 1894-1895 failed and the reform movement of 1898 was strangled. On the one hand, the Qing Dynasty was servile to the imperialists and made reparations; on the other hand, it aggravated the exploitation of the people and cruelly suppressed them. The corruption of political affairs and the darkness of society made Li Boyuan in his youth extremely worried and indignant and wanted to reform. He expressed his ambition in the poem: "the world is dim and dark. I don't know when it will be bright? The scholar, with tears in his eyes, swore to save all living beings. " In 1897, at the age of 30, Li Boyuan, who had a solid foundation in literature, came to Shanghai and founded the guide newspaper, in order to expose the current maladies and encourage good and punish evil. Soon after, it changed to "game newspaper" and then to "prosperous newspaper", and was employed by the commercial press to publish the semi monthly magazine "embroidered novel". He was the founder of Shanghai tabloids in the late Qing Dynasty. Mr. Lu Xun said that his newspapers "wrote notes on advocating excellent living for the sake of ridicule" (a brief history of Chinese Novels). In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, all kinds of decadent phenomena in officialdom and society were exposed with the pen of ridicule and indignation, which was welcomed by people from all walks of life and widely distributed. Later, many imitators started to run the conservation tabloids one after another, but none of them had a large circulation.

In 1901, the Qing government held special economic subjects. The so-called special economic examination is a temporary special examination. Only those who have considerable qualifications and have been recommended by prestigious officials can take the examination. After they have passed the examination, they can become officials immediately. At that time, there were many people who had official titles but had no real positions. At this time, Li Boyuan became famous for writing novels in Shanghai, and Zeng Mutao, the country minister, recommended him to take the special economic examination. He refused to take the exam and was praised for his noble interests. Later, he died in Shanghai at the age of 40.

Creative career

Li Boyuan was born in Shandong Province in 1867. He lost his father in his early years and was raised by his cousin. Therefore, he was deeply impressed by the corrupt and dark officialdom. In his youth, he was good at making arts, poetry and Fu. In 1891, he was the first scholar in the local examination.

In 1895, when the Sino Japanese war broke out, Li Boyuan's heart was pricked by domestic and foreign troubles. Influenced by the reform thought, he gave up the pursuit of imperial examination and founded the guide newspaper in Shanghai in 1896. This is the earliest tabloid in the history of Chinese newspapers and periodicals. In the second year, he founded Game Daily, with 4 pages in each issue and about 5000 words. Words and advertisements account for half of the total. There are market news, humorous articles, poems, lantern riddles, stele biographies, couplets, wine orders, debates and other columns. These two newspapers mainly published official jokes and folk anecdotes, which were quite different from those of other newspapers at that time. They were loved by ordinary citizens and depressed literati, and opened up the way for Chinese recreational tabloids. In fact, Li Boyuan's original intention is to expose, satirize and denounce corrupt officials and political corruption by means of game theory and ridicule, hoping to improve and change the social reality. Lu Xun once pointed out that the fate of such tabloids "lies in Kuangshi". Later, Li Boyuan transferred "Game Daily" to others and founded "world prosperity daily" in 1901. As a daily newspaper, it has columns such as satirize forest, chronicles of art, unofficial history, current affairs talks, novels, treatises and Tan Cong. It also focuses on exposing and satirizing corruption in the officialdom. It has serialized "muddleheaded world" written by Wu Jianren, a famous condemnation novelist, and even his own description of the Boxer Uprising It contains the novel "gengzi guobian Tanci" and so on. At that time, he lived in Laohe Road (today's Liuhe Road), where brothels were clustered. He specially pasted a couplet on the front door, which read "old steeds and flowing warblers are next to each other". In this environment, he began to write "the appearance of Officialdom". The novel was composed of several independent short stories. Originally, it was planned to write 120 times. Later, due to illness, it only wrote more than 50 times, supplemented by his friends to 60 times Basically, it is the anecdotes he collected from his relatives and friends, such as the 43rd chapter "eight absurd living without Festival", which refers to Zhang Zhidong, and the 44th chapter refers to eunuch Li Lianying, which comprehensively and intensively depicts all kinds of bureaucrats in the late Qing Dynasty, reflecting the ugly phenomena of corruption and fraud in the whole officialdom. Because he was good at denouncing the malpractice of the times with his comic style, he was very popular with readers and became one of the four "condemnation novels" in the late Qing Dynasty. At the same time, he was serialized and published separately by the newspaper in five parts, which had a great influence in the history of Chinese literature. Under the influence of Li Boyuan's successful founding of the world prosperous newspaper, Shanghai tabloids have sprung up one after another, so he is known as the originator of tabloids.

In addition, Li Boyuan also initiated the establishment of literary and art groups such as "maritime literary society" and published "maritime literary society daily" by publishing house. In 1903, he was employed by the commercial press as the chief editor of Xiuxiang novel, which often published the works of Wu Yanren and others, including Liu e's novel Lao Can's travels, and Li Boyuan's own works, such as a small history of civilization, living hell, the story of the sea and sky, China's present record, xingshiyuan Tanci, etc It is also a publication that criticizes social evils in the form of literature and art. In order to attract readers, some Tanci, operas and essays are interspersed on the page. All the novels are accompanied with embroidered pictures and illustrations, which are very popular with readers. Li Boyuan's works in this period were still closely combined with reality. For example, his "xingshiyuan Tanci" publicized breaking superstition, opposing foot binding and opium smoking. A brief history of civilization reflected all kinds of old China in the late Qing Dynasty under the reform movement and imperialist aggression, satirized the feudal intellectuals' misunderstanding of civilization. The story of Hai Tian Hong Xue described the life of brothels, so some people commented on Li Boyuan To a certain extent, his description reflects the conflict and transformation between the new and the old. He was also good at painting and used it for recreation in his spare time. But his life is not prosperous, often in debt, one new year's Eve, debt collectors came one after another, he had to run to a teahouse to escape. He suffered from the most serious lung disease because of his heavy work and difficult life. He died in Shanghai in 1906 because of the deterioration of lung disease. He was only 40 years old. There are "taro fragrant room seal", "notes of Nanting", "four words of Nanting" and a variety of painting and calligraphy works.

Main works

He has written more than ten books, including gengzi's Tanci, officialdom's appearance, a brief history of civilization, China's present, living hell, Haitian Hongxue, Li Lianying, a dream of prosperity on the sea, notes of Nanting, four stories of Nanting, funny Conghua, wonderful works of Chenhai, strange book quick view, and xingshiyuan Tanci. Among them, officialdom is the representative work of condemnation novels in the late Qing Dynasty.

Work style

Zhao Yuanren, a famous linguist from Changzhou, pointed out the difference between "gentry talk" and "street talk" in his book a study of modern Wu dialect. It can be seen literally that "jietan" is the dialect that spreads in the streets and the common people's mouth; "gentry Tan" comes from the dialect of officials and gentry. Li Boyuan, because he lived in the marketplace and was raised by his uncle for many years, had a good understanding of the unique dialect of officialdom. Therefore, Li Boyuan naturally revealed a lot of gentry dialects in his officialdom

Bellyache (5.11): in the Qing Dynasty, there were some officials at a certain level who were in office or newly appointed, and others paid him for a subordinate petty official. This phenomenon is called bellyache.

ZhengTu (19 titles) and woollen pen (19.11): there are two ways to seek official positions in the Qing Dynasty: one is to give money to the imperial court and get the position according to the amount of money, which is called donating official positions; the other is to seek official positions after passing the imperial examination (the examination should be answered with woollen pen), so there is a saying that "woollen pen can be exchanged", which is called "ZhengTu".

Big hat (3.6): in the Qing Dynasty, officials wore a big hat with a sharp top and a round edge, which became another name for officials. Big hat has also become a nickname with background and backstage in officialdom.

One bottom and one side, one bottom and one side, and one bottom and one side (4.14, etc.): the corruption of officials in the Qing Dynasty included one in the Ming Dynasty and one in the dark. Therefore, there is a bottom with one side, a bottom with one side, and a bottom with one side. The merchants in Qing Dynasty also made money in different ways

Chinese PinYin : Li Bao Jia