In the late Qing Dynasty, there was a generalist, he was Liu Hu. His knowledge is extensive, proficient in archaeology, good at literature, and has outstanding achievements in arithmetic, medical taoism, river management, etc., and has been praised by scholars at home and abroad as "novelists, poets, philosophers, musicians, doctors, entrepreneurs, mathematicians, bibliophiles, antique collectors, water conservancy experts, philanthropists".
Mr. Hu Shi once summed up Liu Hu's life, saying that he "has four major events: one is river work, the second is the identification of oracle bone script, the third is to ask for the opening of mines in Shanxi, and the fourth is to buy rice from Taicang to help Beijing refugees." Mr. Hu did not mention another major event of Liu Hu, that is, he also wrote the "Travels of the Old Remnant", which made him famous in history.
As a rare generalist, Liu Hu has dabbled in many fields and written a lot of books, leaving us with a rich cultural heritage. In addition to "The Travels of the Old Remnant", Liu Hu also wrote the tiansuan works "Pythagorean Tianyuan Grass" and "Lone Triangle Technique", the Zhihe works "Tu Kao of the Changes of the Yellow River in Past Dynasties", "Seven Sayings of the Zhihe River", "The Continuation of the Zhihe", the medical work "The Collection of Human Life and Peace" (unfinished), the Jinshi works "Tieyun Hidden Turtle", "Tieyun Tibetan Pottery", "Tieyun Clay Seal", and the poetry collection "Tieyun Poetry".
However, Liu Yan's life is full of legends, and he has been repeatedly framed by the officialdom because of his shrewdness and strongness, and at the same time, because he bribed officials, leaving the world with the ridicule of "anti-corruption writers are also corrupt". He participated in foreign mining and other things, and was directly called a traitor by the people. Its two-sided life is lamentable.
Liu Hu was the Chinese who paid attention to the Western world earlier in modern times. In the great changes of the late Qing Dynasty, when the great powers frequently invaded, his prescription for the turbulent Qing Dynasty to "support the decline and rejuvenation of the Qing Dynasty" was to borrow foreign capital to set up industries, build roads and mines, extricate the people from poverty, and gradually move the country toward prosperity and strength. In a letter to the famous archaeologist Luo Zhenyu (who later married Liu Hu as a son and daughter), he once said: "When the Jin mine is opened, the people can be nourished, and the country can 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. ”
His views sounded reasonable, but handing over the right to exploit the country's mineral resources to foreign countries was a very dangerous thing, and it was even more intolerable to the government and the public at that time.
At that time, the capitalist countries in the West were eyeing China's rich mineral deposits and plundering resources to carry out economic aggression against China. In 1896, after the "leather bag" company "Beijing Syndicate" (Fu Company) was registered in London, the founder Rochadi rushed to Beijing to conduct public relations. He needed to first find a general manager who was familiar with The Chinese bureaucracy and could entrust him with delicate tasks. His good friend, Ma Jianzhong, the general office of the China Merchants Bureau, recommended Liu Hu to him. Ma Jianzhong also helped Liu Hu build a relationship with Li Hongzhang and his two sons, a major minister of the late Qing Dynasty, and gained sufficient political support.
At this time, Liu Hu was invited by Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang, to Hubei to set up the Luhan Railway, but he could not play with Sheng Xuanhuai's wrist and was squeezed out; then he wrote to the governor Wang Wenshao, who was directly subordinate to him, proposing to build the Jinzhen (Zhenjiang) railway, but he was involved in the infighting between the Zhenjiang Township party and caused a commotion.
Liu Hu also left a rather negative evaluation in the official field of the capital for paying bribes in Beijing. He once took "dozens of calligraphy and paintings" to another fellow villager who was in a high position, Weng Tonggong, who was the teacher of the Guangxu Emperor and was then the minister of military aircraft and the Shangshu of Hubu, as evidenced by a "diary" on the 21st of May 1895: "Liu Yiren, a fellow villager in Zhenjiang, repeatedly handed in a post at the office of the superintendent, took 50,000 silver, went to Beijing to make a point, camped and ran a railway, and yesterday dared to entrust people to paint dozens of pieces in characters. Remember it as the basis for the evil artemisia. ”
Liu Hu bribed Weng Tonggong, naturally in order to "contract" the railway project, but he did not expect that Weng Tonggong was high in style and bright, did not remember the friendship of the same hometown, was not moved by heavy money, and also recorded Liu Hu's ugly deeds in his diary.
Therefore, when Roshadi came to Beijing, Liu Yan, who worked at the prime minister Yamen, was depressed. After Being led by Ma Jianzhong, Liu Hu gladly became the Chinese manager of Fu Company and began his much-criticized comprador career.
At the beginning of Liu Hu's comprador career, his relatives Mao Qingfan and his wife and uncle Gao Zigu were all in the middle to help. Mao Qingfan was a close subordinate of the military chancellor and Hubu Shangshu Weng Tonggong, and Liu Hu's contacts with Weng Tonggong were inherited by him. Weng Tonggong's attitude towards Fu Company, he also revealed to Liu Hu at any time. Although Gao Zigu was Liu Hu's colleague in Premier Yamen, as the granddaughter-in-law of the Beiyang chancellor Wang Wenshao, his energy was naturally not comparable to That of Liu Hu. After Wang Wenshao was concurrently in charge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Minister of Military Aircraft, Gao Zigu was in charge of the telegraph codebook of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The qing court's top management's confidential documents and telegrams about the affairs of the Fu Company, he would inform Liu Hu at the first time.
Liu Yan, who used to be a businessman, is a master of operation, good at rubbing the edge ball and circumventing the restrictions of the policy. At that time, the mineral deposits were strictly forbidden to be touched by foreign capital, so Liu Yan thought of a way: the coal mine was still nominally state-owned and mined by itself, but because of insufficient capital, it borrowed 10 million taels of silver from the Fu Company, and the Fu Company thus obtained 50% of the profits of the sixty-year mining rights of the mines in LuXian County, Pingding Prefecture, Lu'an and Zezhou in Shanxi Province, and bore all the expenses in between. The contract is called "raising foreign debts", but it does not stipulate the repayment period nor the interest on the loan, which is essentially a disguised sale of minerals, which is unfavorable to the country and the people.
Liu Yan's move naturally infringed on the interests of the local kiln owners in Shanxi, and everyone attacked it with indignation, strongly accusing Liu Hu of this move as a traitorous act. The kiln masters in Shanxi widely mobilized various social relations, and the Shanxi officials and the people exchanged seals and impeachments, and the momentum was huge, at that time, the xenophobic atmosphere in North China was active, and the imperial court was also conservative, so Hu Pingzhi, the governor of Shanxi, was ordered to retire early, and Liu Yan was dismissed from public office. Fu Company was also temporarily silenced and forced to stop operating, and it was not reopened in Shanxi until after the Boxer Rebellion, and it was greatly developed, and the mines in Shanxi were full of Fu Company's private pockets.
The troubles encountered in Shanxi made Liu Hu learn a lesson. After thinking about the pain, his approach in Henan changed. Fu Company's Henan business is relatively smooth. In Henan, Liu Hu quietly hid behind the scenes, let his relatives and provinces supplement Daocheng Enpei and Hanlin Academy to review Wu Shizhao, and came forward to set up a "leather bag" company "Yufeng Company", which has no funds and no mining site, which is actually a "red hat" tailored for Fu Company to circumvent the ban on foreign investment. Then there was the "standard process": Yufeng Company "borrowed" money from Fu Company to open a mine, guaranteed by the Italian minister Salva, and with the strong cooperation of local officials in Henan, it was quickly approved by the imperial court to open a Jiaozuo coal mine. Liu Hu became a red man of fu company, and he was very busy, not only helping to revise the charter of the Jiaozuo coal mine, but also assisting foreigners in distributing stocks, arranging the work and remuneration of the "compradors", etc., deeply participating in the actual management of the coal mine, and going farther and farther on the road of comprador hated by the Chinese people.
In the Sichuan Maha Gold Mine, Zhejiang Qu, Yan, Wen, And Sifu Coal Mine iron ore and other businesses, Liu Hu made great contributions, he jumped up and down, left and right Fengyuan, helped Fu Company to dot everywhere, and was directly called "Han traitor" by the people. Liu Yan, who became rich first, also set up his own shopping mall and textile factory in Shanghai, but all failed; then he simply cooperated with the Japanese to open a salt factory in the northeast, violating national policies and smuggling it to north Korea, which lacked salt, for huge profits and also helped the Japanese colonial authorities in the DPRK. He also privately met with Japanese envoys and dignitaries, and traveled east to Japan many times, which constituted a stain on his life.
In 1900, the year of Gengzi in the Chinese lunar calendar, a war broke out between China and the eight major powers in the world at that time. The turmoil that broke out more than 100 years ago has also been called the "Gengzi National Change" by Chinese. The Gengzi Rebellion occurred, Empress Dowager Cixi fled west in a hurry, the Eight-Power Alliance occupied Beijing, wantonly burning and plundering, and doing no evil, and the residents of Beijing also faced the threat of starvation. Liu Hu ventured north in August, and after arriving in Beijing in early September, he devoted himself to relief and participated in the terms of peace negotiations. At that time, there was no grain available in Beijing, so Liu Hu bought grain from Shanghai and transported it by sea to Tianjin and then to Beijing. He founded the Pingyu Bureau, which was a rice bowl on one side and a relief on the other. When the Russian army occupied Taicang in Beijing, because there were rats in the warehouse, the Russian army threatened to raise a fire and burn it, so Liu Hu urgently joined hands with other relief groups to collect funds and buy all the rice stored in Taicang as a flat rice, saving the lives of many people. Unexpectedly, this move later became a major crime of Liu Hu's "stealing and selling Taicang guan rice".
In 1905, Liu Hu and Cheng Wenbing, admiral of the Yangtze River, jointly bought 3,890 mu of land in Jiupuzhou, Jiangpu County, of which Liu Hu's name was 1945 mu, and applied for a license. Liu Yan believes that this place will become a place for merchants to take care of in the future. Jiang pu had a noble gentleman Chen Liu, who had served as a WupinJing official. At this time, the imperial court decided to build the Jinpu Railway, with Pukou as the end point, and the land price would rise, and he saw that Liu Hu had bought the land near Pukou and took advantage of it, so he designed to send the tribute to the Military Aircraft Department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Posts and Communications through Wu Wenhan, the Imperial History of Beijing, accusing Liu Hu of "privately collecting foreign shares and buying land" and wanting to put Liu Hu to death.
As a result, Liu Hu was arrested and arrested, and later exiled to Dihua (present-day Urumqi).
During the Dihua period, liu hu practiced medicine and diagnosed diseases, and often sang harmony with the local literati moke poetry, but unfortunately most of them have now been lost. He also exerted his specialty of narrative scenery, using the form of couplets to sketch a map of the late Qing Dynasty Dihua terroir of Wei Miao Wei Xiao for posterity, which is breathtaking: "The flowing water bridge urges fishing shadows, and the spring wind deep alley sells flowers." ”
On the eighth day of July 1909, Liu Hu suddenly suffered a stroke and died in Dihua at the age of 52. Three years later, the Great Qing Dynasty also died of an acute stroke. (Liu Jixing)