"The Journey of the Old Remnant" is a masterpiece of the population, its author Liu Hu is also one of the most popular writers, he chanted the spring city of Jinan's good sentence "family spring water, household weeping willows" is unforgettable, his MingHuju storyteller Bai Yu Black Lady is even more amazing, but Liu Hu's experience of exile in Xinjiang in his later years and death in a foreign land has always been little known.
Spring City scenery
Although Liu Hu was born into a family of officials and eunuchs, he was open-minded and informal, and had no intention of gaining fame in Kejubo. He was proficient in mathematics, medicine, and water conservancy, worked as a doctor, engaged in industry, and successively entered the governor of the river, Wu Dacheng, and the governor of Shandong, Zhang Yao, to help control the Yellow River. Because of his meritorious treatment of Huang, Liu Hu's reputation rose and he was sent to the Prime Minister's Office of State Affairs to serve as a prefect. Feeling the decline of the country's situation, Liu Hu proposed to the imperial court the idea of borrowing foreign capital to set up an industry, but he was criticized by the diehards as a traitor, and Liu Hu could not help but be discouraged, so he abandoned the official Enlightenment Buddha, traveled around the country, observed the people's feelings, and cured the people's diseases -- it is not difficult to see the shadow of the author himself from the protagonist of "The Journey of the Old Disabled".
After the change of gengzi state, Liu Hu went north with funds and bought too much grain from Tsarist Russia at a low price to help the victims of the disaster, but was unexpectedly framed and impeached by the enemy family for private sale of warehouse millet, and in 1908 he was exiled by the Qing court to Xinjiang and lived in Dihua (now Urumqi). Regarding this matter, Luo Zhenyu, Liu Yan's relative, recorded in the "Fifty Days of Dreams": "When the coalition army entered the capital city, the two palaces were fortunate, and the people were hungry and hungry. Jun (Liu Hu) entered the country with blackmail and negotiated relief. Suitable Taicang was the stronghold of the Russian army, and the Europeans did not eat rice, so the King asked the Russian army to get it as cheaply as possible. To the people, the people depend on peace. The reason why Jun Pingsheng benefited others was really this. A few years later, a certain shanchen was guilty of selling warehouse millet privately, causing the death of Xinjiang. ”
Liu Hu
After arriving in Dihua, Liu Hu had no place to stay, so he threw himself into a city god temple in Ximenli as a shelter. This city god temple was built in the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, brick and wood structure, sitting north to south, there are three large round gates, the temple has a vestibule, an east courtyard, a large hall, a harem and other buildings, incense is exuberant, tourists are endless, is an important religious activity site in Dihua City that year. At that time, most of the people living in the temple were homeless poor people, they went to the streets to beg during the day, and returned to the temple to stay at night, although Liu Hu fell here, he was after all a Sven person who had been an official and had articles passed down the generations, and it was inconvenient to beg along the street. At this time, there happened to be a Boarding Taoist priest surnamed Liu in the City God Temple, known as "Liu Long Legs", who was proficient in medical practice, and there was an endless stream of people who came to the temple to seek medical treatment. When he saw that Liu Hu also knew medicine, he invited him to help, and the two of them worked together to discuss medical skills and diagnose some difficult and complicated diseases together.
Liu Yan and Liu Daoshi took turns to go up the mountain to collect medicines, and took turns to consult at the temple, which also complemented each other. Liu Yan admired the "Liu Long Legs" person very much, and once gave him a poem specially: "Dao people do not live in the mountains, and it is not idle to cure the disease and save people." With Yang Chun's two feet, the jade door was closed several times in his life. Soon, Liu Daoshi was invited by a friend to go to Wutai Mountain in Shanxi, and later sat down in the temple. Since then, Liu Hu has been alone in the City God Temple, he was originally familiar with medicine, traveled in the mainland for many years, has a wealth of clinical experience, and the fee is low, and sometimes poor patients do not take anything, so he soon became famous throughout the city. The people near Dihua knew that there was a "bodhisattva doctor" living in the City God Temple, so they came to see him, and the trust and needs of the patients were a great comfort and encouragement for Liu Hu, who was "guilty" of exile on the frontier.
Liu Hu was exiled to Dihua, Xinjiang (present-day Urumqi)
While practicing medicine in Dihua, Liu Hu began to write the medical book "Life Safety and Collection", which he specifically mentioned in his letter to his in-laws and Gansu envoy Mao Qingfan. Liu Yan also often sang and sang with the local literati Moke poetry, but unfortunately most of them have now been lost. On the door of the City God Temple, he wrote a couplet written by Hai Rui, the upper link is "People have no high heart, they have their own generation and creation"; the lower link is "The cause is predetermined, why use the organ skillfully". This couplet not only reflected Liu Yan's deep hatred of official corruption, but also showed his idea of enlightening into Buddhism, which swept the whole city for a time. 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." ”
In the early summer of 1909, Liu Hu "suddenly suffered from phlegm, woke up and fainted, and healed ineffectively", and when he got up on the morning of August 23, he suffered a stroke and fell, and this literati who had been in the wind and dust for a lifetime died in Dihua, Xinjiang, in the midst of poverty and illness.