The name Chen Menglei may not be familiar to everyone, but when it comes to "Ancient and Modern Book Integration", which is the largest and most abundant existing book, I believe that you should not be unfamiliar with it, and Chen Menglei is the compiler of "Ancient and Modern Book Integration".
Chen Menglei was a native of Fuzhou, Fujian Province, who was a scholar in the ninth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1670 AD), and was officially awarded the Title of Shu Jishi of the Hanlin Academy, responsible for drafting edicts for the emperor and explaining the scriptures, and three years later he was promoted to the editor of the Hanlin Academy, and had the qualification to compile history books.
During his time at the Hanlin Academy, Chen Menglei met Li Guangdi, a native of Anxi, Fujian Province, who was also an editor, and as the saying goes, "When a fellow villager sees a fellow villager, two tears flow", and the two became close friends at first sight, but later it was Li Guangdi's paper that threw Chen Menglei into the abyss of eternal disaster.
At the end of the twelfth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Chen Menglei and Li Guangdi returned to their hometown in Fujian Province, and just as they were sharing the joy of heaven with their relatives in their hometown, the "San Francisco Rebellion" led by Wu Sangui, Shang Kexi, and Geng Jingzhong broke out. Geng Jingzhong's title at that time was the King of Jingnan, and his fief was in Chen Menglei's hometown of Fujian, and his residence was in Fuzhou, Chen Menglei's hometown.
Although Geng Jingzhong is a prince, he is actually a big old man from the root, because his father Geng Zhongming was a miner in the first place.
Interestingly, the big old man often prefers to be vassal and elegant, pulling tiger skins to make big banners, such as An Lushan, Li Shidao, and Geng Jingzhong are no exception.
After Geng Jingzhong responded to Wu Sangui's rebellion against the Qing Dynasty, he recruited famous people throughout Fujian and forced them to accept false posts, and Chen Menglei, who was in Fuzhou, naturally bore the brunt of his search.
In order to escape the conscription of the traitors, Chen Menglei secretly fled into the ancient temple in the mountains, and the fierce Geng Jingzhong took Chen Menglei's father as a hostage and forced him to take up a false post.
Forced to be helpless, Chen Menglei had to throw herself into the net and sacrifice herself to save her father, but he always used illness as an excuse not to accept the appointment of the traitor.
Li Guangdi, who was five hundred miles away, was not spared, and he came to Fuzhou from his hometown in Anxi under the persecution of the rebels, and Chen Menglei and Li Guangdi, two colleagues of the Great Qing Hanlin Academy, actually met again at the rebels' base camp.
Li Guangdi was a scheming man who had cheated Geng Jingzhong's full trust while maintaining a comradely relationship with Chen Menglei. Geng Jingzhong believed in Li Guangdi's loyalty to him, and the string in his mind to prevent the other party from escaping was loosened, so Li Guangdi successfully escaped from Fuzhou, the thief's nest, on the grounds that his father was seriously ill and went home to visit him a few months after being trapped.
Before Li Guangdi left, he and Chen Menglei had been engaged in the activities of "secret agents" spying on the military intelligence of the rebels, and the two of them took advantage of Geng Jingzhong's staff and Chen Menglei's advantages as a native of Fuzhou to make a more detailed investigation and record of the deployment of troops, defensive arrangements, and people's hearts and minds in Fuzhou City, and carefully wrote this information on several pieces of parchment that were not afraid of water, and then wrapped it into small balls and placed them in several special red wax pills. Made into a wax pill secret letter that is both easy to carry and not easy to be detected.
When Li Guangdi successfully escaped from Fuzhou, this secret letter of the red pill was hidden in his luggage.
According to Chen Menglei, when Li Guangdi was in Fuzhou, he agreed with him that he would "disperse and rebel against the party and listen to the news, and that Li Guangdi would run away and provide rebel intelligence to the Qing army "from the front of the mountain road signal army."
However, the subsequent developments were completely unexpected by Chen Menglei.
The red pill secret letter that Chen Menglei and Li Guangdi jointly completed was finally presented to the Kangxi Emperor's Dragon Book Case, and the content was still those contents, but the signature changed from two people to one person, the three words "Li Guangdi" were in sight, and the name of "Chen Menglei" was missing.
Li Guangdi rose straight up because of this red pill secret letter, flew yellow Tengda, and eventually became a scholar of Wenyuange University, while Chen Menglei became a "rebellious" criminal because he lost the signature right of the red pill secret letter, and was first arrested and imprisoned, and then beheaded for the crime.
Before and after Chen Menglei was imprisoned, he wrote many letters asking Li Guangdi to testify on his behalf, "The Festival of White He", but never received any reply.
After the entanglement of Chen Menglei and Li Guangdi spread, most of the scholars and doctors sided with Chen Menglei, and under the pressure of the crowd, Li Guangdi had to write to the Kangxi Emperor to intercede for Chen Menglei.
In the recital, Li Guangdi recognized Chen Menglei's loyalty in the thieves' camp, believing that his feelings were pitiful and his deeds were despicable, but he never mentioned that the two of them had jointly written the Red Pill Secret Letter to provide important information for the imperial court.
Extremely disappointed and out of anger, Chen Menglei wrote a "Message to the Capital City God" with a stroke of his pen, denouncing Li Guangdi's shameful behavior of deceiving the king and his friends, unkindness and injustice, and ugly face.
Regarding the secret letter of the Red Pill, Li Guangdi has his own remarks, but if you let everyone choose one of the politicians who work hard like Li Guangdi and the simple scholars like Chen Menglei as the object of belief, I think everyone should take the latter as the final choice like the scholars and doctors at that time.
Later, under the rescue of Shangshu Xu Qianxue and other righteous people in the Punishment Department, Chen Menglei was spared the death penalty and was sent to the cold land in the northeast to serve his sentence.
In the twenty-first year of the Kangxi Dynasty, in 1682, Li Guangdi was promoted to the post of attendant and official attendant, while Chen Menglei embarked on a long journey of exile under the escort of the messenger.
Chen Menglei was exiled at Shangyang Fort in Fengtian, which was the northernmost barracks on the defense line of the Great Wall of Liaodong Province, and for half a year there was a cold wind, and in winter it was as windy as a knife and heavy snow.
Chen Menglei, who had experienced a series of drastic changes, fell ill shortly after arriving at Shangyang Fort, but the cruel fate did not let him go--his parents in Fuzhou's hometown could not withstand this sudden and heavy blow, and they abandoned the world one after another, and his wife, who was with him and shared bitterness and was in love with him, died a few years later in the cold Shangyang Fort.
Such a severe pain in life made Chen Menglei beat his chest and his heart and lungs were broken, but he did not succumb to fate, but buried his head in reading and writing, and let books heal the unspeakable candor in his heart.
During the seventeen years of exile in Fengtian, Chen Menglei successively compiled books and works such as "A Brief Introduction to Zhou Yi," "Shengjing Tongzhi," "Chronicle of Chengde County," "Chronicle of Haicheng County," and "Chronicle of Gaiping County," which made indelible contributions to the cultural development and inheritance of the northeast region.
It can be said that each of these tomes is full of Chen Menglei's painstaking efforts and tears, which is exactly what is called "full of ancient and modern words, and several bitter tears." All cloud authors are stupid, who understand the taste."
In 1698, the Kangxi Emperor, who was on tour of Fengtian, read a poem by Chen Menglei and felt particularly fond of it, so Chen Menglei was fortunate enough to return from the desolate Shangyang Fort to the bustling city of Beijing, and was appointed as the attendant of the Third Prince Yin Zhi. Chen Menglei was single-minded and dutifully counseled Yin Zhi.
Yin Zhi admired and respected him at the same time, and the two got along very harmoniously and established an extremely deep friendship.
Two years later, the Kangxi Emperor arranged a cultural project for Chen Menglei to make him live forever— the editor-in-chief of the "Integration of Ancient and Modern Books". With the help of Yin Zhi and others, Chen Menglei based on the "Xieyitang" collection and the family collection of books, "eye camp hand inspection, endless morning and evening", after six years of painstaking editing, Yu Kangxi forty-five years to repair a large encyclopedia of more than 10,000 volumes, "consistent size, ancient and modern, class column parts, outline and discipline".
If Chen Menglei's story ends like this, it can also be regarded as a bitter end, and the merit is complete, unfortunately, his life is far from being so lucky.
In 1722, the Kangxi Emperor died, and the fourth prince Yin Zhen took the throne, which is the yongzheng emperor in history. Yongzheng claimed that the empress dowager had launched a frenzied persecution of her brothers who did not stand with him, and the third prince, Yin Zhi, who had always had a good relationship with the deposed prince, naturally could not escape the net, and was first assigned to the Jingling Tomb in Zunhua Malanyu as a Kangxi tomb, and then was imprisoned and died in the Yong'an Pavilion of Jingshan.
Chen Menglei, as Yin Zhi's mentor and friend, was once again pushed by fate to the edge of the cliff of life, and he was exiled to Heilongjiang, which was a thousand miles farther away than Fengtian Shangyang Fort, at this time, Chen Menglei was already a seventy-two-year-old ancient rare old man, but he had to embark on the road of distribution that was windy and sandy, the road was winding, and the life and death were uncertain.
When he continued north through Shangyang Fort, which was guarded at that time, he must have remembered the famous tragic poem of the Tang Dynasty poet Jia Dao--"For no reason, he crossed the sanggan water, but looked forward to the state as his hometown".
Although the encounter of exile again is even more unfortunate, although the environment of the Heilongjiang Shu institute is even worse, the undefeated Chen Menglei can still face the suffering, laugh at life, melt the ice and snow of fate with a spring heart, and educate the local students with the mentality of martyrs in their twilight years.
Thirteen years later, the fifty-seven-year-old Yongzheng Emperor died, and the eighty-five-year-old Chen Menglei was still alive and tough, still writing the legend of the life of an elderly man in the magical land of the White Mountains and Black Water...