This sentence comes from Tan Sitong's last poem. After the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898, the die-hards headed by Empress Dowager Cixi persecuted the reformists. Tan sitong didn't want to escape and take refuge, so he decided to wake people up with his own blood. In prison, he wrote this magnificent poem. One of them is "intentional killing thieves, powerless to return to heaven!"
What Tan Sitong said was to support the government to change the system in China and make China stronger from weak, but the powerful conservative forces made him powerless.
Extended data:
Tan sitong devoted his life to killing thieves.
Tan Sitong devoted himself to the reform and political reform all his life, arguing that only by developing national industry and commerce and learning the political system of the western bourgeoisie can China become strong. Publicly put forward the ideas of abolishing the imperial examination, developing schools, opening mineral deposits, repairing railways, running factories and changing the official system. , is the most radical of the reformists.
In his early years, he carried out the New Deal in Hunan and trained a large number of reformists by using the current affairs school. Later, he took part in and led the Reform Movement of 1898 (the 24th year of Guangxu), during which he assisted Emperor Guangxu to carry out the reform, rectify the bureaucracy and get rid of bad politics. Finally, with the determination of "willing to smear politics with blood", he sacrificed for reform, spread new bourgeois culture and ideas, and criticized old feudal culture and ideas.
Although the bourgeois fraternity, equality and freedom are false, he shattered feudal absolutism and feudal ethics with fraternity, equality and freedom. Under the historical conditions of old China, it has its outstanding progressiveness in the fierce anti-feudal absolutism.
Reference source: Baidu Encyclopedia-powerless