Yue Fei, a famous general in the Southern Song Dynasty who fought against the Jin Dynasty; Yu Qian, a nationalist who saved the day during the Tumu Change in the Ming Dynasty; and Zhang Huanyin, a famous general in the late Ming Dynasty who fought against the Qing Dynasty. Although they belonged to different times and had never met, they were buried at the West Lake in Hangzhou, known as the “Three Masters of the West Lake”, and have been admired by future generations. However, during the Cultural Revolution, their bones were tragically destroyed.
I. Yue Fei
Serving the country with fierce loyalty
Yue Fei (1103-1141), character Pengju, was a famous general of the Southern Song Dynasty who fought against the Jin Dynasty and was a national hero for centuries. At the age of 19, he joined the army to fight against Liao. In 1126, when the Jin soldiers invaded the Central Plains, Yue Fei joined the army again and began his military career of fighting against the Jin army and defending his country.
History says that when Yue Fei was leaving, his mother Yao stabbed four big words on his back, which became the creed that Yue Fei followed all his life. After leaving his mother, Yue Fei left himself alone to serve the then Marshal of the army, later Song Gaozong, and began to perform a great drama of “loyalty” in history.
Yue’s army shocked Liao
Due to Yue Fei’s good management of the army, he defeated the Jin army time and again, and did not lose any of the more than 100 battles he participated in. “Yue’s army was famous in the north and south of the country. At that time, the commander of the Liao Kingdom, Jin Wuji, could only lament that “it is easy to shake the mountain, but difficult to shake the Yue Family Army”.
Yue Fei once said: “There is no other way to use the military, but the five things of benevolence, faith, wisdom, courage and severity, which cannot be used. Those who have merit heavy reward, no merit heavy punishment, line orders strict is also.” This is why Yue Fei gave two clear requirements to his troops: “Discipline is strict, no offense in the autumn” and “Soldiers do not offend orders, the people do not tire of soldiers”. He even asked the Yue family army to do: “freeze to death without demolishing the house, starve to death without captivity.”
In the Yue Family Army, military discipline was particularly strict. “Those who take a penny from people will be chopped.” Once, a soldier used a bunch of hemp from the people to bind firewood without permission, and was discovered by Yue Fei and immediately executed according to military law. On another occasion, a soldier under Wang Gui, the second most important person in the Yue family army, took the opportunity to steal a reed raft from a civilian’s house, and when Yue Fei learned about it by chance, he immediately executed the soldier and beat the general Wang Gui with a hundred military sticks for “incompetent control and not finding it in time”.
For example, during a march, Yue Fei found a piece of thatch missing from the roof of a newly built store and immediately summoned the owner to ask him about it. The owner of the house said that it was not the soldiers who disturbed, but the roof was originally missing a piece of thatch. Yue Fei did not believe that the house would be built with a piece of thatch missing, and the owner was not a barren family. He knew that the owner was hiding something and ordered a thorough investigation, which eventually led to a horse sergeant. The sergeant admitted that he was eating in the store, heard that Yue Fei was coming, and was anxious to get on the horse between, accidentally pulled down a bunch of thatch. Seeing that the sergeant was tied up, the owner’s family knelt down together and cried for mercy, saying that the sergeant had indeed not harassed his own family, the sergeant was spared from execution, but not spared a hundred military truncheons.
It is also with such strict military discipline, Yue family army’s reputation is also spread among the common people. Usually, when the people heard that other armies were coming, they immediately hid, but when they heard that the Yue Family Army was coming, the people came to meet Yue Fei’s army with ox carts pulling food and topped with incense pots, and they even preferred to starve themselves, hoping that the Yue Family Army would have good physical strength to expel the Jin army from the Central Plains.
Outside of the strict military discipline there was also strict training of military training. Even when the troops were resting, Yue Fei took his soldiers in heavy armor to charge hills and jump trenches, which was as strict as when they were fighting, as the saying goes, “It’s harder on the training ground, but easier in battle. With the strictest training system and combat discipline of ancient Chinese army, the “Yue Family Army” also became the “first strongest army in Southern Song Dynasty”, which was invincible in battles.
In addition to this, Yue Fei also cared for his soldiers, and often ate with the lowest ranking soldiers. When soldiers were sick, he often personally mixed medicine for them; when his generals went out to war, he asked his wife to condole with their families; when a soldier was killed in battle, Yue Fei made sure to nurture his surviving family, raise his orphans, and help his descendants to get married; every time the court rewarded, all of them were distributed to the soldiers, and he did not take a single penny.
Yue Fei wrote the famous lyric “Full River Red” to express his feelings of unfulfilled ambition during his resistance to the Jin dynasty: his hair rises in anger, and at the fence, the dashing rain breaks. I look up to the sky and whistle. Thirty years of fame, dust and dirt, 8,000 miles of clouds and the moon. Do not wait for leisure, the white head of youth, empty sadness. The shame of Jingkang has not yet been snowed; when will the hatred of the courtiers be extinguished? I will drive a long chariot to break through the shortage of Helan Mountain! I have the ambition to eat the flesh of the captives, and laugh about drinking the blood of the Huns. We will start over again, pack up the old mountains and rivers, and face the heavenly queue.
“Jailed and murdered on trumped-up charges
Because of Yue Fei’s bravery, the Liao kingdom was so afraid that they sent people to collude with the Southern Song officials, and eventually Yue Fei was framed by Qin Jun and Zhang Jun as a “trumped up” rebel. Before Yue Fei was killed, he wrote down the words “Heaven and Earth are clear, Heaven and Earth are clear” to show his heart. Also killed was Yue Fei’s son, Yue Yun.
After Yue Fei’s father and son were killed, the jailer Kui Shun risked his life by carrying his body over the city wall and hastily buried it next to the Jiuqu Congsi. History records that until many decades after Yue Fei’s death, the local people still hung up Yue Fei’s effigy in every household, and worshipped him, and many stories of his praise were passed down among the people.
In 1204, 63 years after Yue Fei’s death, the court posthumously crowned him the King of E. In 1221, the Southern Song Dynasty built a new building to house the Yue Fei family.
In 1221, the Southern Song Dynasty built the Yue Wang Temple to commemorate Yue Fei, who was loyal to the country. The temple was renamed “Zhong Lie Temple” during the Ming Dynasty, and has since been built through the Yuan, Ming, Qing, and Republic of China, until the Chinese Communist Party came to power. During this period, it was rebuilt in 1715 and overhauled in 1918.
Yue Wang Temple was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and Yue Fei’s bones were missing
In 1966, in response to Mao’s call to “break the Four Olds”, the Red Guards of Hangzhou’s fourth high school smashed the temple of Yue Fei, which was almost across the lake from it, destroying not only the statues and other cultural relics in the temple, but also slandering it. They not only smashed the temple statues and other cultural relics, but also slandered Yue Fei as a “representative of the landlord class” and an “executioner who suppressed the peasant uprising”, and dug up the graves of Yue Fei’s father and son. Hangzhou locals say that so far the bones of Yue Fei and his sons are nowhere to be seen, and that the rebuilt tomb is just a tomb of clothes. Others say that Yue Fei and his sons were burned to the ground at that time. As if such insults were not enough, the Yue Fei Temple was once transformed into a “rent collection yard” for the so-called “Liu Wencai, a bullying landlord in Dayi County, Sichuan Province”.
In 1966, a scholar took the opportunity to visit the temple of Yue Fei to see the hero in his heart, but what he saw before his eyes was an unbearable sight: the front hall was being converted into a class education exhibition, the stone monument of “Tomb of King Yue Wu Mu” in the back garden was smashed from its base and fell to the ground, the grave was no longer sealed with soil, the back wall of the mausoleum was pushed down by more than two meters. A few outside walls are clearly to Yue Fei posted a large print, the sins of Yue Fei. But what’s amazing is that the posters are also densely filled with pen characters in various styles, without exception, all praising Yue Fei and condemning the crime of smashing Yue’s grave, including the expression: “Yue Fei, the national hero, is immortalized forever! “I want to learn the patriotic spirit of Yue Fei!” ……
Conclusion
Although the Chinese Communist Party restored Yue Wang Temple in 1979 after the end of the Cultural Revolution, some cultural relics and monuments can never be restored again, and some wounds will be engraved in history forever. Did Yue Fei, who served his country with great loyalty, ever think that the Central Plains would still be waiting for “the day to come” more than eight hundred years later?
II. Yu Qian and Zhang Huanyan
Yu Qian, a national warrior
According to the History of the Ming Dynasty, when Yu Qian was born in Hangzhou at the age of seven, a monk called him “the future prime minister of the time”. 1421, Yu Qian won the entrance examination and his talent was appreciated by Ming Emperor Xuanzong and others. When King Zhu Gao Xu of Han conspired to rebel, Yu Qian followed Xuanzong on his expedition. After Zhu Gao Xu surrendered from the city, Emperor Xuan Zong ordered Yu Qian to verbally list Zhu Gao Xu’s crimes. Yu Qian’s stern words were righteous and stern, and his voice was stern and fierce. Zhu Gao Xu was trembling on the ground and said he deserved to die. The king was very pleased with this.
The government’s integrity
After the army was dismissed, Yu Qian was reappointed as the governor of Shanxi and Henan. He was a clean and fair official and was loved by the people.
After the reign of Ming Emperor Yingzong, he relied on the eunuch Wang Zhen. Wang Zhen not only like power, but also like money, some people in order to get rich, every court meeting to send gifts to Wang Zhen. In 1446, when Yu Qian was about to go to the capital to see the emperor, his friends advised him to bring a little gift to Wang Zhen, but he strongly disagreed, and he was imprisoned and sentenced to death because Wang Zhen secretly instructed his henchman Li Xi to add the charge of discontent with the emperor. Later, under the pressure of the petition in Shanxi and Henan provinces, Wang Zhen exempted Yu Qian from the death penalty, and was relegated to the position of junior secretary of the Da Lisi.
After the Mutiny of Tumu, he saved the day
In 1449, in the absence of sufficient preparation for the Ming Dynasty, Wang Zhen encouraged King Yingzong to follow the example of Song Zhenzong’s expedition, despite the opposition of other ministers. In order to make a name for himself in history, King Yingzong listened to Wang Zhen’s advice. Hearing that King Yingzong was on his own, he pretended to retreat and lured the Ming army into Datong and the area north of it. At the place of Tumu Fortress, the Ming army was surrounded and more than half of them were killed or wounded, and Yingzong was captured. The history is known as the “Mutiny of Tumu”. Wang Zhen was killed by the hammer of Fan Zhong, the general of Yingzong’s guard, who also died on the battlefield.
After the news of the defeat of the Ming army reached Beijing, all the officials wailed in the hall. Later, the Empress Dowager held back her tears and ordered King Zhu Qi Yu, younger brother of King Yingzong, to oversee the country. The government has been in a state of panic about the defeat of the army and how to fight against Yexian, some officials are in a state of panic and even advocate moving the capital to flee south. The empress was appointed by the empress as the Minister of War, responsible for defending Beijing.
Yu Qian put forward the slogan of “the society is important, the king is light”, and in September, he assisted Emperor Yingzong’s brother Zhu Qi Yu to succeed the throne as Emperor Jing, Ming Dynasty, with the year name Jingtai, remotely honored Ming Yingzong as the emperor, and established Ming Yingzong’s son as the crown prince. This makes also the first attempt to use Yingzong as a tool of coercion plot can not succeed.
After his accession to the throne, Zhu Qiyu knew the right people and employed upright ministers such as Yu Qian, which turned the country into a safe place. For example, he issued an edict to the border guards not to listen to the pretexts of the Wazar, so that the Wazar intended to use the name of Ming Emperor Yingzong to cheat money, cheat open the door failed.
In the spring and summer of 1450, the first attack on the Ming dynasty was defeated. At this time, the internal Wallach were dissatisfied with Yexian’s policy of attacking and plundering, and advocated peace with the Ming Dynasty and the return of Yingzong.
This was the first time in Chinese history that a Han emperor was released without any humiliating conditions after being captured by a foreigner. After Yingzong returned to the capital, he was placed under house arrest in the Southern Palace by Zhu Qi Yu. And after the failure of Yexian’s attack on Ming Dynasty, his power was declining.
Executed for injustice
Although Yingzong’s return did not affect Zhu Qi Yu’s throne, he abolished Yingzong’s crown prince in favor of his own son, Zhu Mizi. As a result, Zhu Mizi died prematurely and the throne of the Crown Prince was left vacant. This should be a punishment from heaven for not keeping his promise.
In 1457, the eighth year of Yingzong’s house arrest, Zhu Qi Yu was bedridden. The general Shi Heng, minister Xu Youzhen and eunuch Cao Jixiang took the opportunity to launch a coup d’état, stormed the South Palace, embraced Zhu Qizhen straight into the Palace of Heaven, ordered the ringing of bells and drums, summoned all the officials, announced the reset. The history is called “the change of the gate”.
After the restoration of King Yingzong, under the persuasion of some ministers, King Yingzong was forced to execute Yu Qian and other ministers who supported the reign of King Daizong. It is said that when the Jingyiwei went to copy Yu Qian’s home, originally thought that the home of this dynasty’s top officials must be a lot of oil, is a fat job, did not think of the time, are stunned, really can only be described as a family, nothing, the only valuable thing is the emperor gave the python robe, sword weapon. A present Jin Yiwei commander unconsciously left tears: the world and such a clean official ah!
Zhaoxue
Yu Qian once wrote this poem: “hammer ten thousand chisels out of the deep mountains, the fire burned as if idle. I am not afraid to break my body and bones, but I want to leave my innocence on earth.” Yu Qian was able to leave his innocence on earth with his actions.
During the reign of Emperor Xianzong of Ming Dynasty, Yu Qian was given a clear consecration. The enjoined book says: “Just when the country is in a difficult time, to defend the country from calamity, only Yu Gong can insist on justice and hold the festival, but he was cynically harmed by a group of powerful and treacherous officials. The late emperor knew his injustice when he was alive, and I really pity his loyalty in my heart.” The History of the Ming Dynasty describes Yu Qian as “a loyal and righteous martyr who competed with the sun and the moon” and lists him, along with Yue Fei and Zhang Huanyin, as one of the “Three Heroes of the West Lake”.
Yu Qian’s tomb and shrine were both destroyed during the Cultural Revolution
After his death, Yu Qian was buried in his family’s ancestral tomb at the foot of Santai Mountain in West Lake, and in 1489, a shrine was built next to his tomb. According to the records of the Republic of China, Yu Qian’s tomb path started from the south shore of West Lake near the Jingci Temple and stretched for several kilometers to the tomb, which was spectacular. For hundreds of years after Yu Qian’s death, he was worshipped in Hangzhou, Henan and Shanxi.
In 1982, Yu Qian’s tomb was restored and the tombstone was re-established. The tomb faces east, the tomb is in the shape of a horseshoe, there is a tomb road in front of the tomb, and six pairs of stone statues are placed on both sides of the tomb road.
Loyalist Zhang Huanyin
Also famous with Yue Fei and Yu Qian is Zhang Huanyan, a general who fought against the Qing Dynasty in the late Ming Dynasty. Zhang Huanyan, who served as a minister of the Ministry of War in the Ming Dynasty, faced the Qing army in the south after Emperor Chongzhen died in Beijing and the Ming ministers surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, and rose up against the Qing Dynasty with Qian Sule and others, and headed by King Lu Zhu Yihai, blocked the Qing soldiers in Shaoxing. After defeat, it entered the sea to occupy Zhoushan to continue to resist the Qing Dynasty and seek opportunities to restore the Ming Dynasty. Its tenacious support for 19 years.
Kangxi three years, because of leakage of information, was surrounded by the Qing troops sneak attack, Zhang Huanyin and his entourage, all captured. At first, the Qing court tried to persuade surrender, but believe that the husband “the righteousness of the people, the national compassion and family revenge, what is expected of the heroic deeds, sage learning” Zhang Huanyan, refused the multiple persuasion, and died without giving in. The folklore says that on the day Zhang Huanyan served his sentence, the sky suddenly rained heavily and the people cried and sent.
After his death, Zhang Huanyan was buried on the edge of West Lake, not far from Yue Wang Temple and Yu Qian’s tomb. His poem about Hangzhou, “Into the Woods”, has been handed down to future generations: What do you want when your country is broken and your family is dead? There is my teacher at the head of the West Lake, and the sun and the moon are hanging over Yu’s tomb, and half of the walls of Yue’s shrine. I am ashamed to share three seats with my bare hands, and I want to borrow a branch for my heart. The first thing I want to do is to get to know the people in the city.
Sadly, during the Cultural Revolution, the tomb and monuments of the martyr Zhang Huanyin were destroyed, and only in 1983 were they restored.
Conclusion
After hundreds of years, the loyalty of Yue Wu Mu, Yu Qian and Zhang Huanyan still echoes on the shores of Xizi Lake. Although the Chinese Communist Party destroyed their graves and brought shame to their loyal bones, it could not destroy their righteousness that has been passed down to this day, and this righteousness will continue to influence those who come after them through time and space.
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