Zheng Banqiao, whose real name is Zheng Xie, is called Banqiao. He was born in a poor teacher's family in Xinghua, Jiangsu. He lost his mother when he was a child and his family was poor. His father took the meaning of "evil can be softened" in Shang Shu Hong Fan and named him Zheng Banqiao in the hope that he would become an easy-going person. Who expected that his son would become one of the few artists in the cultural history of China? There are only two huts in his house, west of Laoqiao in the east of the county seat. The moat is clear, and people use wooden boards to build bridges, which are called Banqiao. When Zheng Banqiao grew up, he read some books with the help of his friends, and studied hard by himself, and finally became a wizard. He couldn't forget the bridge and the moment he watched the scenery by the bridge, so he named himself "Banqiao Taoist". His name is widely circulated, but his real name is unknown. Being listed as one of the "Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou", his poems and paintings are strange and his temper is eccentric. I despise scholars and declare that "the first person in the world is only a farmer"; I said that "writing and painting are common", and I hate people who are arty. I publicly posted a "pen list" to show that my calligraphy and painting are gold; He is also a famous poet in Kanggan's poetry circle. He worships Du Fu and Li Shangyin, denounces Li Bai and Wen Tingyun, and thinks that the latter should not be compared with the former. Zheng Banqiao was 43 years old after taking the imperial examination in the first year of Qianlong, and became a county magistrate in Fanxian County, Henan Province and wei county City, Shandong Province. "During his twelve years in office, he was imprisoned several times. He was hungry at the age of 20 and begged for relief for the people. He was extremely embarrassed and begged for illness." Legend has it that because he petitioned the victims many times and asked his boss for relief, his boss was very angry and accused him of "not preventing beforehand, not preparing beforehand, and not providing relief afterwards", and even framed him for corruption and fraud on the pretext of disaster relief. Zheng Banqiao resigned angrily, begged for illness and returned to Yangzhou to make a living by selling paintings. On the day of his resignation, the people of wei county stayed in tears, leaving thousands empty, and every family made portraits to mourn his achievements.
Zheng Banqiao's poetry is also a must, and some poems and Taoist feelings are still circulating among the people. At the age of 63, he lived in Rugao and Wang's house. He wrote a preface for Banqiao, which said that he highly praised Du Fu's poems. "Banqiao is carefully read", "A poem is worth a thousand dollars." Moreover, he believes that "worrying about the country and the people is everything in the world", and caring about the sufferings of the people should be an important theme in the poem. His poems, such as Escape from the Wild, Returning Home and Tough Officials, can indeed be compared with Du Fu's Three Officials, Three Farewells and Bai Juyi's The Charcoal Man, which reflects the tragic fate and painful life of farmers and the poet's sympathy and pity. At that time, severe famine occurred in all parts of Shandong, but heavy taxes and miscellaneous taxes remained unabated. It is terrible for farmers to sell their children and wives and flee to find food. As a local official, Zheng Banqiao felt it was his duty to appeal to his colleagues and superiors. Who would have thought that he was framed? At that time, in the dark officialdom where flattery was the norm, Zheng Banqiao's personality became a "freak".
I like reading Zheng Banqiao's letters best. According to him, "* * * hundreds of dozens of letters", but about half of them were lost. "So far, only 55 letters have been saved." These letters can be said to be exquisite prose with true temperament, cordial and free and easy, resistant to human body flavor, written casually, never pretentious, quite natural and simple, and also the spiritual monologue of this cultural master. Nowadays, people often comment on his "rarely confused" philosophy, thinking that it is not clinging to it and letting nature take its course. As everyone knows, this is also a kind of ideological confusion and contradiction. He lived in the prosperous time of Kanggan, and was close to the end of feudal society in essence, and his architecture was in a decadent state. Zheng Banqiao is very sensitive to this. He is worried about the country and the people, but he is full of helplessness and unable to save the times. In particular, it is difficult for his thoughts to break through the shackles of the old traditional moral culture, and he can only wander in this maze, which will inevitably lead to a painful, complicated and divided cultural personality, which is the profound reason for his grotesque.
The author ... came across Zheng's "Mozitu" (hereinafter referred to as "Yaben"), in which the poem is famous: "Yazhai lies and listens little, and doubt is the voice of the people's sufferings." Some small officials in Caozhou County always care about their feelings. "This is a piece of ink bamboo, which was given to the governor by Zheng Banqiao when he was making a magistrate of a county in wei county, Shandong. Creation date should be before 1753. ...