Liu Yan's life is quite legendary. As a literati, he was not good at sacred learning, but liked all kinds of miscellaneous studies, whether it was looking, mathematics, the way to cure the river, or medicine, music, and lexicon. When he went to Henan with his father, he had many friendships with local jianghu figures and gained a lot of insight. Liu Hu originally did not like the study of saints, and after the growth of social experience, he hated it even more. Because he believes that the knowledge in those books is often powerless in the face of the ever-changing reality.
Later, when he went to Nanjing to take the exam, he actually escaped from the battlefield, which showed his disgust for the imperial examination. After the fall of sun mountain, Liu Yansuo gave up the idea of the imperial examination and began to take the road of business.
The road to business has been bumpy. He first opened a tobacco shop in Huai'an, then went to Yangzhou to open a clinic, and finally opened a printing bookstore in Shanghai. Although he was busy and diligent, he did not accomplish anything, and this experience can be regarded as the precursor of Liu Hu's business in the future. Closing the last store, just as it was hesitating, the Yellow River was flooding.
Hearing this news, Liu Hu came to be interested. His father, Liu Chengzhong, was very good at the study of river engineering, and Liu Hu inherited his father's learning, coupled with his own field research and intensive research, so he was quite confident in the river. At that time, there were many reports in the newspapers about the breaking of the Yellow River embankment, the village farmland was destroyed, the people were seriously affected, Liu Hu deeply realized the urgency and importance of harnessing the Yellow River, and immediately began to prepare.
After careful consideration, Liu Yan spent money to donate an official position in order to obtain the right to participate and speak in the matter of governing the river. Liu Hu is not a pedantic and inflexible literati, but a literati who is interested in establishing a national salvation industry, and he knows that in order to achieve things, means are indispensable. Facts have proved that it is precisely because of this official position that he has spent money to donate, he has successfully completed things, repaired the river, and achieved the purpose of protecting the family and the people. At that time, Wu Dazheng, the commander-in-chief of Zhihe, was promoted to an official because of his meritorious service in Zhihe, and by the way, he also recommended Liu Hu. In addition, liu hu wrote several books on the way of governing the river according to the actual experience of governing the river, so he was favored by the imperial court, "enlisted in the capital division, for the prefect's use."
Liu Yan had no intention of becoming an official, and originally he did not rule the river to enter the army, but to save the people and raise the people. But if you want to achieve great things, you must first create momentum. Although entering and leaving the official field was not Liu Hu's original intention, the network of relationships he made from this was of great help to him in starting an industry in the future.
In his early years, Liu Hu listened to Li Longchuan's lectures and was deeply influenced by the Taigu School. Li Longchuan's remark that "the great illness of this country is lost in the people" can be described as enlightening to Liu Hu, who is full of salvation ideals. The Taigu school advocates the theory of "raising the people" and advocates developing the economy, first making the people rich, and then practicing education, so as to achieve the goals of "educating the world" and "making the country rich and the people strong."
It is precisely because Liu Yan holds this purpose and belief, devotes himself to industry, and repeatedly fought setbacks. Even in the case of "slander all over the world", he still did not change his original intention.
He applied to undertake the Luhan Railway, but was liquidated due to disagreements with Zhang Zhidong, who was then the governor of Huguang. After the failure, he went to Tianjin to organize the construction of the Tianjin (Tianjin) Town (Zhenjiang) Railway, but was unexpectedly opposed by the people of his hometown, Jiangjiang, who believed that the railway could not bring them prosperity, so in the end, Liu Hu was expelled as a traitor in his hometown.
Liu Hu did not stop there. He failed to build a railway, so he turned his attention to the Shanxi coal mine. He once wrote to his friend Luo Zhenyu: "If the Jin mine is opened, the people will be nourished, and the country will be rich." The country has no reserves, it is better to let the Europeans open it, I strictly set its system, so that thirty years and the whole mine road belongs to me. If so, then the benefit of the other is in the moment, and the benefit of mine is in the hundred lifetimes. Liu Yan's plan is: to transfer the mineral mining rights to foreigners and then recover them after thirty years, in fact, to borrow foreign funds, equipment and technology to improve the utilization rate and mining efficiency of minerals, and ultimately to make "the people nourished".
The starting point of this method is good, but in practice it is quite problematic. His good friend Luo Zhenyu once said that he was really "good for the country and harmful for junye", that is, in the end, he would only blame himself. As the old saying goes, "It is in people", if things are done in people's lives, even if things are done, they will one day fail. Luo Zhenyu could see it thoroughly, and he had already seen the fact that what Liu Yan had done was unpopular and incomprehensible. Later, sure enough, in response to his opinion, Liu Hu was falsely accused of being a "traitor" and therefore lost his official hat, and if it were not for the Eight-Nation Alliance invading Beijing, the emperor's ministers would not have bothered to take care of themselves, and I am afraid that he would have been dragged to Caishikou for execution.
After suffering this disaster, Liu Yan did not "converge" much, but once again "ran into a catastrophe".
When the Eight-Power Coalition occupied Beijing, the flow of grain was blocked, and the people in the city were starving and had no rice to eat. Liu Hu made a special trip north from Shanghai to relieve the disaster. At that time, the Russian army occupied taicang in the imperial court, and Liu Hu consulted with the Russian army to purchase all the stored grain in Taicang at a low price to help the people.
It stands to reason that saving so many people should be counted as a great act of charity. However, many years later, Liu Hu was convicted of this incident, exiled to Xinjiang, and eventually died in a foreign country, and the crime was: smuggling warehouse millet.
Whether it is the fleeing imperial court, or the minister who ignores the lives of the people, or the doctors and scholars who live in seclusion and do not care about the world, and who pride themselves on being clean and high, they should have felt ashamed in the face of the responsibility and determination of a reader. However, they have the power to punish and blame, they say that he has collaborated with the enemy and betrayed the country, they have exalted foreign countries, and they say that he has betrayed the interests of the country for his own selfish desires, which is shameful and hateful.
This is an era when people who can speak the Tao hold on to power, but those who do practical things are bullied, and it is no wonder that Liu Hu said in the self-narration of "The Journey of the Old Disabled": "The chess game is crippled, and my people will be old, and if you want to cry, you have to care? The phrase "the chess game has been crippled" is full of the pain and indignation of how many years of failure, and also implies that the Qing Dynasty is difficult to return and is about to collapse.
"The Journey of the Old Remnant" also writes about the darkness of the officialdom, and also writes about corrupt officials misleading the country and harming the people, but with Liu Hu's personal experience, he felt the most was the uselessness of the Qing officials. Officials who do not collect money are not necessarily good officials, and the reason why they do not collect money may only be to preserve their reputations, not really for the sake of the people. Even worse are the clean officials who are confused and cannot do practical things without doing practical things. Corrupt officials mistakenly mislead the country in the light, but the mistakes of clean officials are in the dark, so that people cannot be defended.
Especially when China is poor and weak, and is in turmoil, it is even more hateful for officials who only know how to protect themselves and only stare at their political achievements. At the same time, when denunciation novelists of the same period extended their brushstrokes to corrupt officials and exhausted the faces and scandals of corrupt officials, Liu Hu's vision and views appeared very unique. This is because his writing comes from personal experience, and even the scenes in the novel will never fall into the trap, but will be described based on personal experience. He rarely uses piao sentences to describe genre scenes, but makes good use of white sketches to outline, and the language is fresh and lively, appropriate and natural.
Liu Hu was famous for his "Journey of the Old Remnant" in later generations, but writing a novel was only a summary and condensation of his life. Liu Yan's life may be like the name of the protagonist of this novel, crippled. He had no traitorous heart, but building railways and opening mines were all used by others, and in the end they were all of no benefit to the country. He was clearly a salvation from fire and water, but he was exiled for his sins. The reason why Liu Hu named the protagonist Lao Mu may also be to him for the pain of his life.
In "The Journey of the Old Remnant", Liu Hu carved his worries about the country to the fullest, but the world sneered at Liu Hu that "anti-corruption writers are also corrupt". For Liu Yan, the conflict between thought and action is not a contradiction that cannot be solved. He has always walked on the path he believes, never repented, never reneged, however, his vision can not keep pace with the times, and in the end, he can only return to the west on a distant frontier, leaving endless sighs behind him.