1876 juren, 1877 went to Japan with Ambassador He. He was once called the most elegant and educated diplomat in China by Japanese historians. During my stay in Japan, I wrote "The History of Japan" (written in 1887), with 40 volumes and more than 500,000 words, detailing the process of Japan's reform and its gains and losses, so as to put forward the idea of China's reform. During my stay in Japan, I suggest adopting a tough policy and opposing Japan's invasion and occupation of Ryukyu 1875. 1882 transferred to consul general in San Francisco. It coincided with the promulgation of Article 15 of the Regulations on Restricting Chinese Workers by the US Congress, and the San Francisco expatriates suffered greatly. Many foreigners were arrested and imprisoned by the local government on the pretext of unsanitary. Earlier, Huang Zunxian proposed countermeasures to the Qing government, but they were not adopted. Therefore, he can only do his best to protect China expatriates within his own authority. After inspecting the residence of Chinese workers in San Francisco, he personally visited the American prison where Chinese workers were held, and asked his entourage to measure the prison area and asked Americans: There are too many people here and the air is dirty. Are the sanitary conditions in prisons better than those of overseas Chinese? Through Huang Zunxian's efforts, all the arrested overseas Chinese were released. Huang Zunxian used international law to win the consul general's right to issue licenses to Chinese workers. Since then, China workers have laws to follow when traveling between China and the United States.
1890, Huang zunxian was appointed as the second counsellor in Britain and consul general in Singapore 189 1. He devoted himself to improving the treatment of overseas Chinese, protecting their property and developing overseas Chinese education, and achieved certain results. 1894+65438 During the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Huang Zunxian was recalled to China as the general manager of Jiangning Foreign Affairs Bureau. 1895, participated in Shanghai Strong Society, founded current affairs newspaper with Yu, Tan Sitong and others, served as Hunan Yanfa Road, and later served as Hunan provincial judge. During the Reform Movement of 1898, he assisted Chen Baozhen, the governor of Hunan Province, to vigorously promote the reform, set up the Hunan Security Bureau, and introduced modern policing into China. 1August, 898, was appointed Minister in Japan. After the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898, he was listed as hell to pay by the Qing government. Due to the intervention of foreign ministers in China, the Qing government allowed Huang Zunxian to resign and return to his hometown.
After returning to his hometown, Huang Zunxian still enthusiastically promoted the constitutional and revolutionary work and devoted himself to the creation of new literary styles, and was hailed as a revolutionary giant in poetry. At the same time, he was enthusiastic about the education in his hometown, founded Jiaying Academy, served as the principal, and actively set up new schools. In his later years, Huang Zunxian hung a picture of the current situation drawn by Xie Zutai, a member of the Hui Association. In the winter of A.D. 1904, the year before Huang's death, he wrote in his last poem "Sick in Shu": ... Your head rests on my wall, and the wall is red and fuzzy. Wipe your eyes, alas, and divide up the map. 1905 On March 28th, Huang Zunxian died in his hometown of Meizhou at the age of 58. Six years later, the Revolution of 1911 broke out and the feudal system in China ended.
Literary achievements
Theme theme
Huang Zunxian experienced turmoil in his early years, cared about reality, and advocated studying from now on to save time (the first part of Feeling). From the third year of Guangxu (1877) to the twentieth year (1894), he has been to Japan, Britain, the United States, Singapore and other places as a diplomat. After personal contact with bourgeois civilization and investigation of the successful experience of Meiji Restoration in Japan, China's thought that he must change to the West was clearly established (self-note "Poems of Jihai" No.47), and under the agitation of new cultural thoughts, he began a new exploration of poetry creation. He deeply felt that it was extremely difficult for classical poetry to continue from ancient times to the present. However, he is convinced that there are no ancient or modern poems. If you can, what you see and hear, what you see and hear, what the pen is to poetry, why should the ancients? I have my own poet (on poems with Wolf Mountain). His creative practice along this road broke through the traditional world of ancient poetry and formed a new school of independent and unique poetry. He was praised by Liang Qichao as a unique realm, standing on his own feet in the poetry circle of the twentieth century (drinking room poetry) and becoming the master and banner of the poetry revolution.
Huang Zunxian's poems contain things beyond poetry and people in poetry (Preface to Poems in Loneliness), which widely reflects the times experienced by poets and has profound historical content. Anti-imperialism, family protection and reform are two important themes in his poems. In terms of anti-imperialism, from the resistance to the British and French allied forces to the Boxer Rebellion, his poems have a clear reflection. Especially about the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, he wrote a series of poems, such as Sadness for Pyongyang, Sadness for Lushun, Weeping for Weihai, A Trip to Taiwan Province Province, Military Songs of General Crossing Liao, etc., and his anti-imperialist and patriotic thoughts were particularly prominent. Poets praise the Anti-Japanese War and attack surrender in such works, full of patriotic passion and deep concern for the country. Many of these chapters are large in scale and vivid in image, showing the poet's boldness and skill. For example, it was written in "Song of General Feng's Army" that the general was shocked when he scolded his troops, so 5,000 people went. Five thousand troops marched in and continued to kill each other. The thunder cannon wants to make a sound, and the halberd and chest knife are in the neck. The enemy beat the drums and died, and ten thousand snakes walked like ants. Ten swings and no flow, three hundred miles a day. In the Sino-French War, the heroic image of patriotic general Feng Zicai and the unstoppable momentum of Feng Jun were vividly displayed.
Huang Zunxian criticized the stale things in the works such as Feeling, Miscellaneous Feeling and Japanese Miscellaneous Poems, and praised the new things such as overseas students and Meiji Restoration in Japan. Later, he enthusiastically eulogized the reform and hoped that the Chinese nation would rise again through reform: the yellow race held the sun to support the sky and should shine brightly. (To Ren Liang's father in the same year)1When the coup took place in 898, he wrote poems such as Feeling and Looking Up at the Sky. I lamented the death of the New Deal and worried about the country's future. I had mixed feelings: I endured the disaster in Chixian County, China, and felt that it was even more difficult for the yellow people to support Japan (feeling # 8). But he didn't shake his faith. The 47th poem of Ji Hai's Miscellaneous Poems says:
The raging sea is flowing eastward, and all laws will be unified again. After 20 years, the calligraphy is written in my heart. This irresistible spirit of believing in the historical trend of getting old and getting new runs through his poems.
It is worth noting that Huang Zunxian's poems at the turn of the old and the new describe the overseas world and new things that appeared earlier with modern science, broaden the subject matter and reflect the field of life, and write new contents that classical poems do not have. His four poems "Farewell to Today" respectively sang the new situation of parting when ships, trains, telegrams, photos and known things are relative day and night, which is unique and refreshing. Poets integrate new theories into the connotation of poetry, express the ideal of life and the theory of change and transformation of things, thus creating a new realm of poetry. In this poem, the poet expressed many different ideas all over five continents. He stepped into the capitalist world from a feudal country, and everything touched his poetic mood, reflecting the overseas world untouched by the ancients into China's poems. "On August 15th, the Moon on the Pacific Ocean" outlines the unique situation of the night flight in the Pacific Ocean with beautiful strokes. The exotic scenery of various countries, such as the cherry blossoms in Japan (the song of cherry blossoms), the fog in London (the fog in London), the Eiffel Tower in Paris (climbing the Paris Tower) and the sleeping Buddha in Ceylon Island (the sleeping Buddha in Ceylon Island), have all been captured by poets. Overseas poetry also involves foreign folk customs and current affairs politics. Japanese miscellaneous poems reflect Japan's history and social life in many ways. The poem "Chronicle" humorously describes the situation in which * * * and the Democratic Party tried their best to promote themselves and competed fiercely for voters in the US presidential election.
Artistic feature
Huang Zunxian said that elegance does not die because of good works, but after prosperity, it will benefit from strangeness (second edition of Zeng Chongbo). He knows that the life of poetry lies in change and creation. On the basis of widely absorbing the achievements of predecessors, his poems have formed their own unique characteristics along the trend of novelty, innovation and creation in the spirit of good writing. First of all, although his poems often have a forward-looking pursuit of romance and lofty sentiments, the more important aspect is real realism. He has many great works, the length of which exceeds that of the ancients, and often forms his own miniature history. For example, Ke Fan is close to the development history of overseas Chinese in Nanyang, Zhu Ke is a history of blood and tears of Chinese workers in the United States, and the tomb of Li Taihou, the great grandmother, is the author's family history and childhood life history. He is good at describing, describing, writing scenes, laying out scenes, and sketching characters with meticulous ink, with rich content and vivid images. For example, The Song of the General Crossing Liao Army vividly depicts Wu Da. This role. Wu Ben is the governor of Hunan. He likes epigraphy. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out, he just bought a China seal, which was a general crossing Liao. He thought it was a sign of the marquis, so he volunteered to start his career. At the beginning, I wrote about his high spirits in exploring: I heard that the chicken got up in the middle of the night and told the orientals that I was coming. It's only a matter of time before Wan Huhou is accepted on this trip! Heroic. In the article, I wrote about his meeting with the generals:
..... At the annual meeting, the generals were summoned, and steel stoves and silver candles surrounded the red carpet. The wine is hot in the ear, white before drinking, and the sword is cut off. He said that he had studied marksmanship all his life and practiced his eyes and arms for fifteen years. Eyes are still purple and lightning, and bare arms are like iron. The commander of Huaihe River is beautiful, and Xiao Niang and Lu Lao are extremely poor. Watch me get on the horse and kill the thief. Whoever is left or right is the incumbent. Jiang Bi hoof pavilion, a duck green, ordered Wan Li to sell front cigarettes. Huang Zeng sat in the middle, stretched out his hand and wrote an inscription for me!
Wu Da's shameless attitude is arrogant and full of energy. However, as soon as the two armies met, they fled. The former is as imposing as a tiger, while the latter is as timid as a mouse, which effectively outlines its ugly image in strong contrast. Secondly, in order to express rich realistic content, the author pays more attention to absorbing the experience of ancient people in writing poems. The so-called "one-way luck" is used to express the husband and wife's body, and the method of family expansion and separation is used to enter the poem ("Man and Land Poetry, Grass Preface"). But take its long and avoid its short, pay attention to the twists and turns in the text structure, long and uneven; Narrative uses metaphor and description to reduce abstraction and directness; The discussion should be as concise as possible, and after the description, it should be natural and make the finishing point. Thirdly, the author collects language materials extensively, draws lessons from the three histories, captures the books of Zhou and Qin philosophers and the notes of Xu and Zheng philosophers, and whatever their names are related to the present (A Preface to Poems on Man and Land), but at the same time does not exclude the popular theory (Miscellaneous Feeling II). This makes his lyrics rich, expressive, full of vitality and elegant changes. But he used too many elegant words, which inevitably brought difficulties and obscure defects. Huang Zunxian's poems contain new artistic conception in the old style, which embodies the transition from the old to the new.