Liu e

Liu e

Liu e, whose name is tie Yun and pseudonym is Hong Du Bai Lian Sheng, was born in the Sultan of Qingjiang (now Dantu County, Jiangsu Province). He was smart from childhood and could recite 300 Tang poems at the age of five. He was born in the 7th year of Xianfeng, Wenzong (October 18th, 1857) and died in the 1st year of Xuantong (August 23rd, 1909) at the age of 53.

Life of the characters

Liu e was good at arithmetic, medicine, water conservancy, and Western science. He was open-minded and had a sharp observation of current affairs. In his early years, he practiced medicine in Yangzhou, and then changed to business (Liu e opened a tobacco store in Huai'an, Jiangsu Province at the age of 28, and a bookstore in Shanghai at the age of 31, but all of them closed down due to poor management). In 1888, the Yellow River burst into Zhengzhou, and he began to work Wu Dacheng, the governor of the river, and Zhang Yao, the governor of Shandong Province, helped to harness the river. Later, he was recommended to be appointed as a magistrate because of his meritorious service in harnessing the river. He proposed to build railways, exploit Shanxi coal mines with foreign capital, and set up industries (industrial and commercial enterprises) for the benefit of people's livelihood. At that time, people did not understand his intentions and accused each other, and regarded him as a traitor. In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion began, and the Eight Allied forces invaded northern China In Beijing, Taicang millet (the grain in the official granary of the capital) was seized by the Russian soldiers. He bought Taicang millet from the Allied forces at a low price to relieve the starving people. His whole life was very large. However, he was accused of buying Taicang millet privately and exiled to Xinjiang, He lived under the stage of a temple in Urumqi, lived by treating people, and finally died in Dihua (today's Urumqi). He wrote travel notes of Lao can, turtle hidden in Tieyun, and pictures of the changes of the Yellow River in the past dynasties

Representative works

Lao Can's Travels

Liu e's novel Lao Can's travels is one of the four condemnation novels in the late Qing Dynasty. There are 20 chapters in the book. It was published in the semimonthly of Xiuxiang novel in 1903, and stopped in 13 chapters for some reason. Later, it was loaded in Tianjin Riri news. The original Department of Hongdu was born in all kinds of refining. In the Autobiography of the novel, the author said: "the chess game is broken. We will be old. Do you want to cry or not?" The novel is the author's cry for the end of feudalism and the people's suffering. The novel is about what Tie Ying, a quack doctor, has seen and done during his travels. Lao can is a positive character in his works. He wandered in the rivers and lakes and lived by practicing medicine. He was willing to be indifferent and did not enter the official career. However, he was concerned about the fate of the country and the nation, sympathized with the sufferings of the people, and made a clear distinction between right and wrong. With the footprints of Lao can, we can clearly see the social life of Shandong in the late Qing Dynasty. In this picturesque and charming land, a series of soul stirring events are taking place. Feudal officials showed off their power, wantonly harmed the people and built a living hell. The highlight of the novel is to expose the tyranny of "honest and upright officials" rarely exposed in the past literary works. The author said that "the corrupt officials are hateful, everyone knows it. Honest officials are especially hateful. Many people don't know. The official who covers the stolen goods knows that he is ill and does not dare to act openly. The honest official thinks that he does not want money. Why not? Self willed, small is killing, big is wrong country, I personally see, don't know how much. "All the novels have exposed the evils of corrupt officials, and some of them have exposed the evils of honest officials, starting from Lao Can's travels" (the 16th original review). Liu e's "honest and upright officials" are actually some executioners who are "eager to be a big official" and do not hesitate to kill the people for credit, and use people's blood to dye the red top. Yu Xian made up for the governor of Caozhou with his outstanding talent and achievements. In less than a year, more than 2000 people died in front of the Yamen's 12 cages, nine and a half of them good people. Yu Chaodong's family was planted because they had made up a quarrel with robbers. Without any investigation, Yu Xian insisted that they were robbers, and the father and son were killed in the cage. The young son of a grocer in Dongjiakou, who criticized Yu Xian casually after drinking, was arrested and killed by him. The people in the book shop of Dongping mansion tell the truth of Yuxian to the point, "whether you are reasonable or not, as long as he feels good in his heart, he will be in the cage.". Yu Xian's logic is: "this man is unjust or not. If you put him down, you can't be reconciled. I can't even keep my future in the future. As the saying goes, "when you cut grass, you have to get rid of the roots." In order to prosper, he refused to put down his butcher's knife. Lao Can wrote a poem, saying that "it is dark to bury the city wrongly, and the top pearl is red with blood", "killing the people is like killing thieves, and the prefect is Yuanrong", which profoundly reveals their essence. Gangbi is an honest and upright official. He once refused huge bribes, but he relied on no money and no bribes. He blindly speculated to solve the case and killed many good people in vain. He interrogated the Jia family's huge case of 13 lives, subjectively assumed that Wei's father and daughter were the murderers, and severely punished them to extort confessions, which resulted in appalling unjust imprisonment. The novel also exposes the seemingly virtuous officials. Zhang Gongbao, the governor of Shandong Province, was "thirsty for talents" and recruited people with extraordinary talents. On the surface, he is a senior official of "courteous and virtuous corporal", but in fact, he is very fatuous. He did not distinguish between the good and evil, the wise and the foolish, nor could he judge the right and wrong of the advice. His love for talent and virtue brought a series of disasters to Shandong people. Yu Xian, who was "a good official for stealing", was appreciated by him, and gang bi was also his favorite. What was more serious was that he mistakenly adopted Shi Junfu's river control proposal, abandoned the people's dam below Jiyang and retreated to the levee, causing more than 100000 people on both sides of the Strait to suffer. In the interposition of Taohuashan in the novel, it focuses on the two strange people living in seclusion in the barren mountains, i.e. Aunt Huang and Longzi Huang. Through their words and deeds, they publicized the Taigu theory that the author believed in, and maliciously slandered and cursed the revolutionary movement at that time, that is, the so-called "northern boxing and southern revolution", that is, the boxers in the north and the bourgeois revolutionaries in the south, attacking them as "chaotic parties". The Boxer Movement is very powerful, he said that "it almost killed the country"; the revolutionary party is slow to rise, he thought that "not to mention skin ailments, you should know that ulceration can be fatal"; he warned people not to "get involved in his party", showing the author's backward and reactionary side. The first chapter of the novel is the author's symbolic illustration of politics at that time. He compared the corrupt China at that time to an old sailing boat floating on the sea and about to be engulfed by the wind and waves. There are several kinds of people on the ship: one is the person who takes the helm and sails as the leader, which refers to the feudal ruling group at that time. The author thinks that they are "not wrong", just because they are going to the "Pacific Ocean", and they only live in peace, but they don't want to encounter the wind and waves, so they are careless. In addition, they haven't prepared the policy, and when they meet the cloudy day, the sun, moon and stars are covered by the clouds, so they don't rely on them. Another kind of person is the one who instigates rebellion among the passengers, which refers to the revolutionaries at that time and slanders them as "Heroes" who "just collect money by themselves and make others bleed". If we can rely on them, "the ship will cover faster.". There are also some "inferior sailors" who wantonly ransacked passengers. They refer to those who disregarded the overall situation of the feudal dynasty and acted wantonly. The author is also disgusted with them and regards them as sinners. How on earth can we save this dying ship? The author thinks: the only way is to send it a "most accurate" foreign steering wheel, that is to take some Western civilization and repair the broken country. Some of the characters and events in the novel are real people and real things. For example, Yu Xian refers to Yu Xian, gang Bi refers to resolute, Zhang Gongbao (sometimes written as Zhuang Gongbao) is Zhang Yao, Yao Yunsong is Yao songyun, Prince Jin is Prince Zhan, Shen Dongzao is Du Bingguo, Liu Xiaohui is Yang Shaohe, Shi Junfu is Shi Shaoqing, and so on. Black girl and white girl were the real tricksters at that time. White girl, Wang Xiaoyu, played a trick in Minghu, which was known as "Liu Jingting with red makeup". In 1889, when the author was surveying the Yellow River in Shandong Province, he saw the tragedy. As the author said: "unofficial history, make up for the lack of official history.". The name can be entrusted to the emptiness of all the scholars, and the reality of all the things must be embodied. " The artistic achievement of Lao Can's travels is outstanding in the novels of the late Qing Dynasty. Especially in the use of language has its unique achievements. For example, in the aspect of landscape painting, it can be natural and realistic with bright colors. In the book, the scenery of Qianfo Mountain and the moonlit night of Taohua mountain are clear and fresh. When writing about Wang Xiaoyu's singing drum, the author uses the technique of contrast and a series of vivid and appropriate metaphors to describe it vividly and vividly, giving people the feeling of being personally on the scene. Therefore, Lu Xun praised it for "describing the scenery, sometimes considerable" (a brief history of Chinese Novels).

Liu E also wrote a sequel to Lao Can's travels, which was written between 1905 and 1933. According to Liu Dashen, there are 14 chapters in total, of which 9 remain today. In 1934, it was published four times in the semimonthly issue of human world, and the following year, it was published six times in a single edition by Liangyou book company. In 1962, Zhonghua Book Company published the last three chapters of Lao Can's travels. In the first six chapters of the sequel, although there are also revelations about the evil deeds of the bureaucrat's children who wantonly trample on women, the main reason is through the love story of Yi Yun, the nun of doulao palace in Mount Tai, and her in-depth and subtle ideological activities, as well as Chi Longzi's words and deeds. In the last three chapters, the author describes Lao canyou's travel to hell to express his intention of punishing evil and persuading good.

In addition, there are more than 4700 words in waibian, which was written after the 31st year of Guangxu. In addition to Lao Can's travels, Liu e wrote the works of Tian Suan, such as Gougu Tianyuan grass and Gu Sanjiao Shu, the works of river control, such as textual research on the changes of the Yellow River in the past dynasties, the seven theories of river control and the continuation of river control, the collection of human life and peace (unfinished), and the works of Jinshi, such as tie Yun Cang

Chinese PinYin : Liu E