Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 2.pdf/353

 treacherously executed on July 24, 1629. Meanwhile the Manchus, repulsed in the Liao district, had been preparing for an invasion of China by way of Mongolia, and in the winter of 1629 they suddenly appeared in the neighborhood of Peking. Yüan rushed back from Ning-yüan to defend the capital, but was arrested during an interview with the Emperor on January 13, 1630. Although the responsibility for allowing the Manchus to cross the Great Wall was not his, partisans of the late eunuch Wei accused him, on the ground of his earlier truce proposals, of being in league with the enemy. On this charge, and on that of the murder of Mao Wên-lung, he was condemned to death and was cut to pieces in the marketplace. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (see under ), writing in the last days of the Manchu empire, characterized Yüan Ch'ung-huan as China's greatest soldier. With his death, the last hope of resistance to the Manchus outside the Great Wall vanished.

[M.1/259/24b; 3/236/15a; Tung-kuan hsien-chih (1921) 61, full account, compiled from all sources with references; Ming-chi pei-lueh (see bibl. under ) 2/7b, 4/3b, 5/8b, 10a; 袁督師事蹟 Yüan tu-shih shih-chi in Ling-nan i-shu (see under ); Hauer, K'ai-kuo fang-lüeh 139–91, 172–79; Yüan tu-shih i-chi (遺集) with portrait and supplement containing a biography by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, in the collection 滄海叢書 Ts'ang-hai ts'ung-shu; Yüan tu-shih chi chan Mao Wên-lung shih-mo chi (On the Execution of Mao Wên-lung by Yüan) in the collection 荊駝逸史 Ching-t'o i-shih of the Tao-kuang period].

2em

 YÜAN Mei 袁枚, Mar. 25, 1716–1798, Jan. 3, poet, literary critic, and essayist, was a native of Ch'ien-t'ang (Hangchow). Devoted to literature from childhood, he began to compose verse at the age of nine (sui) and received his hsiu-ts'ai degree at the age of twelve (sui). He was the youngest of the 184 candidates to compete to the po-hsüeh hung-tz'ŭ examination of 1736 (see under ), but failed to qualify. In 1739 he became a chin-shih and was selected a bachelor of the Hanlin Academy with assignment, in the following year, to study the Manchu language. But failing to pass the examination on the Manchu language in 1742, he was released from the Academy and was appointed successively magistrate of the following districts in Kiangsu: Li-shui 1742–43, Chiang-p'u 1743, Shu-yang 1743–45, and Chiang-ning 1745–48, in each of which he established a reputation as a capable young official. In 1747 he was recommended by to be department magistrate of Kao-yü, Kiangsu, but was rejected. Resigning (1748) from his post as magistrate of Chiang-ting, he retired (1749) to his newly-acquired "Garden of Contentment", Sui-yüan 隨園 located on an elevation called Hsiao-ts'ang shan 小倉山, about two li southwest of the Drum Tower, Nanking. This garden is alleged to have been built by while he was superintendent of the Imperial Manufactories at Nanking. In 1728 when the latter's son, Ts'ao Fu (see under ), was discharged from the post, the garden came into the possession of his successor, Sui Ho-tê 隋赫德, and was thereafter called Sui-yüan 隋園. It is perhaps this connection of the garden with Ts'ao Yin that led Yüan Mei to assert that his Sui-yüan was in fact the Ta-kuan yüan 大觀園 described in famous novel, Hung-lou mêng. He found the garden in ruins, but reconstructed it into an elaborate and beautiful villa—changing, however, the writing of 隋 to 隨, a word of the same sound but with a more appropriate meaning. This garden became famous and was frequently visited by admirers, but was completely ruined in 1853 by the Taiping rebels. In 1935 the site, covering some two hundred mu, became the subject of a law-suit in the district court of Chinkiang. By decision of that court (1936) the title to the garden was vested in Yüan Mei's great-grandson, Yüan Ch'êng 袁誠, son of Yüan Tsu-chih (see below).

In 1752 Yüan Mei was summoned to Shênsi as an expectant official, but owing to the death of his father in the autumn of that year he requested leave to attend his widowed mother, and thereafter never resumed political life. In 1755 he moved his entire family, including also several widowed aunts and sisters and their children, into the Sui-yüan and there he led a life of dignity and leisure. He made a good living as a writer, and states in his will that once he received one thousand taels silver for composing a funerary inscription. It is said that envoys from Korea sought his works at high prices. Thus he was able to maintain a large household in comfort and entertain friends with ease and decorum. After the age of sixty he made a number of journeys to Kiangsi, Kwangtung, Kwangsi, Hunan (1784), Fukien (1786) and to some famous places in Kiangsu and Chekiang 955