The life of Zeng Minxing

Zeng Minxing was smart, witty and eloquent since childhood, and his father named him Minxing. When Zeng Minxing was a teenager, he was addicted to Confucian classics, commenting on ancient and modern times and being good at holding arguments. He could have become famous in science, but at the age of 20, he got a serious illness, which made him give up his studies. From then on, Zeng Minxing lived a leisurely life, reading books at will, living a quiet life, without seeking official advancement. He devoted himself to reading, reading a lot of books, from imperial edicts to miscellaneous notes of officials, and also read Notes in the Lane in the library. He also likes the theory of Yin-Yang and Five Elements. He can hang his wrist for calligraphy, painting, insects, flowers and birds, and also make great efforts to study medicine and architectural design. Zhou Bi praised him for "making the past serve the present and knowing how to adapt".

Ceng Min is upright and upright, and he is well informed. He is generous, affectionate and righteous, promotes good and suppresses evil, and is in urgent need. He gave all his houses, fields and possessions to the poor, but he traveled around the world himself. Throughout his life, Ceng Min experienced the turbulent and bitter period of power treachery and foreign invasion in the history of the Song Dynasty, witnessed all kinds of ugly acts from the decline of the Northern Song Dynasty to the local existence of the Southern Song Dynasty, and also saw the resistance struggle of patriotic soldiers and civilians. He roamed the rivers and lakes, lived in seclusion all his life and liked to write books. His son, Sanpin, sorted out his daily notes and compiled them into 10 Volume of "Awakening Alone Magazine". Preface by Yang Wanli, inscription by celebrities such as Zhou Bida and You Mao. This book was later listed as a novelist in the volume of Sikuquanshu. There are 255 articles in the book, most of which are useful. Nearly half of the entries describe the local customs, places of interest and various figures of the literati class in Jiangxi, involving anecdotes of celebrities from all walks of life and many aspects of social life in the Song Dynasty. What is more valuable is to write the deeds of Fang La, the leader of the peasant uprising, into the book, becoming the first person in Chinese history to write the deeds of Fang La into the history books. This book is an anecdote of the Song Dynasty, which can make up for the lack of historical biography.

On October 29th, the second year of Xichun (11751February 3rd 13), Zeng Minxing gave a banquet with the clan. He watched as usual, spent more than 20 words on paper and pen, and told the philosophers to immediately put pen to paper and go to bed and die suddenly. Yang Wanli made a pertinent evaluation of his life in Zeng Wanci: "Talking about the Millennium has strange thoughts. Abandon me before the time, and refuse to do it before the time. The old crane has the meaning of clouds, and the snow is long and loose. I have lived alone in Zhihu all my life and looked at people coldly. "