People have different understandings of the desperate poem He Zhongtang left before he hanged himself, just like "there are a thousand Hamlets for a thousand readers." There is a rather incredible theory that involves the afterlife and reveals the secret of the demise of the Qing Dynasty. Another statement is relatively more realistic. It simply expresses He Zhongtang's review of his life and his outlook on the next life.
The poem left by He Zhongtang goes like this: "The dream has been true in the past fifty years, and now I have to let go of the red dust. In the future, the water will contain the dragon's sun, and the cigarettes will be left behind." According to the first statement I came to explain that in the past fifty years, I have experienced hardships, promotions, and wealth. If I die today, all these things are destined to be blown away by the wind. If there is an afterlife, I will still be as favored by the emperor as I am in this life, and then acquire a huge fortune. In the next life, he will be a good man again.
According to the second theory, the first half of the sentence "The dream has been true for fifty years, now I give up and thank Hongchen." It talks about something related to Qianlong. When Qianlong was not the emperor, he fell in love with his father's wife. This concubine was also unlucky, because of this incident, her life came to an end. When she left, Qianlong left a red mark on her forehead. The fact that Hezhongtang was favored by Qianlong back then is also related to this trace.
The last two sentences are "In the future, the water will contain the dragon's sun, and the cigarette will be left behind." This sentence is an allusion, talking about the birth of Bao Si. And Bao Si has always been considered a beauty disaster in history, and overthrew the Zhou Dynasty. "Keeping cigarettes is the future" is about He Zhongtang's hope that he will be like Bao Si in the future and overthrow the Qing Dynasty. This fact is that the Qing Dynasty did come to an end in the hands of "Cixi".