Chapter 76 257 Gu Yanwu wrote a book and said

After the suppression of the San Francisco Rebellion, the rule of the Qing Dynasty in China stabilized.However, there is another point that Emperor Kangxi is not at ease, that is, he is afraid that some literati left over from the Ming Dynasty will not be convinced.Therefore, he adopted a method to open the "Learned Hongci Department", ordering officials and court ministers from all over the country to recommend learned scholars to the court, and immediately appointed him as an official.This trick really worked, and many well-known scholars and literati from all over the country were called to the capital to become officials.

However, there are also some scholars who believe that they are subjects of the Ming Dynasty, and it is a loss of integrity to be an official in the Qing Dynasty.They would rather risk beheading than answer the call.One of them was the famous thinker Gu Yanwu. Someone wanted to recommend him to learn Hongci. He wrote and replied: "What else do I want for a 70-year-old man? What I lack is death. If I must be forced to answer Zhao, I have no choice but to die." Gu Yanwu was born in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, and was born in a wealthy family in the south of the Yangtze River. His grandfather was a very knowledgeable person, and he believed that reading must study the reality.Influenced by his grandfather, Gu Yanwu liked to read books such as "Historical Records" and Sun Wu's Art of War since he was a child, and he was very concerned about current affairs.Later, when he failed in the imperial examination, he decided to give up the imperial examination. He read through the historical classics, studied local chronicles from all over the country and the memorials of celebrities in the past dynasties, and began to write an important historical and geography book "The Book of the World's Commandments, National Benefits and Diseases".

While he was concentrating on his studies, the Ming Dynasty perished, Qing soldiers went south, and people all over the south of the Yangtze River organized anti-Qing struggles. Gu Yanwu and his two friends also participated in the battle to defend Kunshan.After 21 days of fierce fighting between the army and the people of Kunshan and the Qing army, due to the disparity in strength, they finally failed.When Kunshan City fell, Gu Yanwu’s biological mother had her right arm chopped off by the Qing soldiers: the aunt who raised him (also his stepmother) committed suicide on a hunger strike when she heard that the Qing soldiers had captured Changshu. Even though she is a woman, it is natural to die for the country. I hope you will not be a courtier of the Qing Dynasty, and I can have my eyes closed after I die."

Gu Yanwu cried bitterly, buried his stepmother, and left his hometown.He wanted to cross the sea to join the king of Lu, but before he could go, the regime of the king of Lu had already been destroyed.Gu Yanwu changed his name incognito and ran around the Yangtze River north and south, trying to organize an anti-Qing rebel army, but after all, he was alone and failed. At that time, there were still sporadic anti-Qing activities along the coast and Taihu Lake. The Qing government was very strict in defense. Anyone who was found to be suspected of resisting the Qing would be charged with "passing the sea" and sent to prison.Ye Fangheng, a bureaucratic landlord in Kunshan, wanted to annex the land of Gu Yanwu's family, bribe the servants of the Gu family, and falsely accuse Gu Yanwu of Tonghai.Ye Fangheng also arrested Gu Yanwu and set up a private court to force him to commit suicide.

In order to rescue him, some of Gu Yanwu's friends went to Qian Qianyi, who was an official in the Qing Dynasty, for help.Qian Qianyi was originally the Minister of Rites of the Nanming Hongguang regime and a well-known writer. When the Qing soldiers went to Jiangnan, he surrendered to the Qing Dynasty and had a bad reputation.Qian Qianyi said that as long as Gu Yanwu admits that he is his student, he is willing to protect Gu Yanwu from prison.That friend knew that Gu Yanwu was unwilling to do that, so he made up his own mind, forged a famous post of Gu Yanwu, and sent it to Qian Qianyi for help.

Gu Yanwu found out about this matter, and he blamed that friend for being troublesome, so he insisted on asking for the name card back.The friend refused to ask for it back, so he simply posted a confession on the street, declaring that the name post was fake, which made Qian Qianyi very embarrassed. Gu Yanwu was released only after his friends rushed around.Ye Fangheng still refused to give up and sent someone to follow him.One day, Gu Yanwu was attacked by mobs outside the Taiping Gate in Nanjing, and suffered serious head injuries.Gu Yanwu knew that he couldn't stay in the south of the Yangtze River any longer, so he decided to travel to the north.

When Gu Yanwu went to the north, he firstly wanted to investigate the geographical situation, customs and customs of various places; secondly, he also wanted to find opportunities to make some like-minded friends and carry out anti-Qing activities.He did not give up academic research in the difficult environment of the long journey.Along the way, he used two horses and four mules to carry his bookcase.When encountering a dangerous place, he would visit the local veterans to learn about the local customs and customs. If it was different from what he read in the book, he would take out the book and check it, so that his knowledge would be richer.

From the age of forty-five, Gu Yanwu spent more than twenty years running back and forth between Shandong, Shanxi, Hebei, and Jiangnan, and spent almost half of each year living in hotels.He also used to reclaim wasteland in Yanbei with his friends.In his later years, he settled down in Huayin, Shaanxi. Gu Yanwu had a habit of reading books since he was a child, and he would write down what he had learned, and if he found mistakes later, he would revise them at any time;Accumulated in this way, together with the materials he obtained from investigations and interviews, he compiled a book with an extremely wide range of content, such as politics, economy, history, geography, literature and art, called .This book is recognized as a work of great academic value.In it, he wrote an incisive sentence. He believes that the moral atmosphere of the society is corrupt, which means that the world will perish. In order to keep the world from perishing, every ordinary person with a low status should take responsibility This is how the famous saying "every man is responsible for the rise and fall of the world" comes from).

Thinkers of the same age as Gu Yanwu, as well as Wang Fuzhi and Huang Zongxi, all participated in the struggle against the Qing Dynasty and were still reluctant to be called to serve as officials in the Qing Dynasty.They have made great achievements in academics, and they are collectively referred to as the third Mr. Qing Dynasty in history.