Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 2.pdf/261

 also produced a work concerning his journey to Yarkand, entitled 莎車紀行 So-ch'ê chi-hsing.

A son of Wo-jên, named Fu-hsien 福咸 (d. 1860), when acting as intendant of Southern Anhwei, defended, for three months in 1860, the city of Hsüan-ch'êng against an attack of the Taipings, but was killed after the city surrendered. Another son, Fu-yü 福裕 (d. 1900), was at one time governor of the Mukden metropolitan area (1894–95), but was cashiered. When the Allied Forces took Peking, after the Boxer Uprising in 1900, he committed suicide by taking poison, and with him died his family and the families of several cousins. One cousin who then committed suicide was Fu-jun 福潤 who had served as governor of Shantung (1891–94) and of Anhwei (1894–96). The wife and daughter of another cousin, named Fu-mou 福楙, onetime sub-chancellor of the Grand Secretariat, also committed suicide. This daughter of Fu-mou was betrothed to Tsai-fêng (see under ), the second Prince Ch'un, and after her death the prince was free to marry a daughter of. This seems to have been the episode which a Manchu lady once narrated to Mrs. Conger, the wife of the American Minister in Peking (reference in bibliography).

Wo-jên was widely known for his emphasis on frugality. To promote this virtue, he is reported to have organized a club known as the "Bran Eating Society" (吃糠會). Whether he himself observed the injunction to eat bran instead of white flour is not clear, but a story gained currency that when neighbors looked over his back wall, which had collapsed after a heavy rain, they observed that very tasty food was being prepared in his kitchen. It cannot be doubted that his professed advocacy of the strict moral injunctions of the Sung Neo-Confucianists was a factor in raising him to high offices and to wealth. His opposition to the introduction of Western knowledge was due in part to his ignorance, and in part to a general feeling among the Hanlin group—of whom he was a leading member—that their private interests would be jeopardized if newer ideas were not checked at the source. Men of this type were superstitious and believed in geomancy, in ghosts and in astrology. They despised foreigners because China had several times been humiliated by them. But instead of investigating foreign mays and studying how to meet them, they banned these things indiscriminately, opposing all things of Western origin and all persons who knew about them. Of such a group Wo-jên was the ideal leader, and after his death Hsü T'ung and Lien-i (for both see under ) and other sponsors of the Boxers took his place. Much of the obscurantism which led to the Boxer Uprising, and all but ruined China, may he laid at the door of Wo-jên. If this conclusion seems harsh, it must be remembered that the sons of I-tsung were all notorious sponsors of the Boxers and that I-tsung was a pupil of Wo-jên.

[1/397/1a; 2/46/17b; 5/5/23a; Wo-wên-tuan kung i-shu;, Tu-ch'i-shan-chuang wên-chi, 7/11a; Fêng Shu, Kêng-tzŭ hsin-hai chung-lieh hsiang-tsan (see bibl. under ); 庚子京師褒䘏錄 Kêng-tzŭ Ching-shih pao-hsüeh lu 1/7a; Conger, Sarah Pike, Letters from China (1909), p. 279; Chin-shih jên-wu chih (see ), p. 68.]

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 WU Chêng-chih 吳正治, Jan. 30, 1618–1691, Sept. 17, official, was a native of Han-yang, Hupei. Made a chin-shih in 1649, he was two years later appointed a compiler in the Kuo-shih-yüan 國史院. Being one of a group of fifteen Hanlin scholars who in the summer of 1658 were appointed to administrative positions in the provinces, he received the post of circuit intendant in Nanchang, Kiangsi, and in the following year was made judicial commissioner in the province of Shensi. In 1660 he was recalled to the capital, first as vice-president in the Board of Works and then of the Board of Punishments. In the latter capacity he effected the release of more than two hundred students of Kiangnan who had been imprisoned because their families had been in arrears in the payment of land taxes (see under and ). Made president of the Censorate in 1673, he submitted in this capacity two important memorials recommending that lighter punishments be meted out to deserters from Banners, and that a project to expropriate certain lands for the use of Banner troops in Chihli province be postponed. Prior to this time Chinese officials were virtually debarred from interference in any governmental plans relating to the Banner system, but after these two memorials were sent up these abuses were more or less checked. In 1676 he was chief examiner of the metropolitan examination, and two years later recommended as one qualified to take the special examination known as po-hsüeh hung-tz'ŭ. His nominee emerged 863