foreword Li Hongzhang (1823︱1901), whose real name was Zhangtong, styled Jianfu (one word Zifu), nicknamed Shaoquan (Quan), in his later years he was named Yisou, nicknamed Shengxin, posthumous posthumous name Wenzhong, Anhui Hefei people.An important minister in the late Qing Dynasty, one of the main advocates of the Westernization Movement, the founder and commander of the Huai Army.From the official position to the governor of Zhili and the Minister of Beiyang Commerce, he was awarded the Bachelor of Wenhuadian University.In the eyes of Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi, Li Hongzhang is the only person in the Qing Empire who has the ability to compete with the world powers.He is the author of "The Complete Works of Li Wenzhong".

The ancestors of the Li family, originally surnamed Xu, moved from Hukou, Jiangxi Province to Hefei during the Ming Dynasty to avoid chaos.The ninth patriarch, Li Xinzhuang, had no son. Xu Yingxi, a relative in-law of the same village, adopted his second son, Shen, as his heir, and changed his surname to Li.The Li family lived on farming and studying for generations. It was not until the time of Li Hongzhang's great-grandfather that they started a family in a thrifty manner.It wasn't until Li Hongzhang's father Li Wen'an passed the Jinshi examination in the eighteenth year of Daoguang (1838) that the Li family began to rise from Kejia and became a prominent family in Lujun.

Li Wen'an worked as a lecturer in his hometown for a long time before he became an official through the imperial examination.Li Hongzhang entered Dihua Bookstore to study at the age of six.He was young and intelligent, and successively worshiped his cousin Bo Fangxian and Hefei famous scholar Xu Ziling as teachers, studied classics and history, and laid a solid foundation in knowledge.In the 23rd year of Daoguang (1843), he was selected as Yougong and was ordered by his father to go to Beijing to take the Shuntian Township Examination in the next year (Jiachen). The thirteenth Jinshi in the second grade of Weike, a Shuji scholar of the Hanlin Academy.It was Pan Shien, the chief examiner, Du Shoutian, Zhu Fengbiao, and Fuji as deputy examiners, and Sun Qiangming as his house teacher.

On the way to Beijing, Li Hongzhang wrote ten well-known poems "Entering the Capital", which have been recited all over the world.Whoever wrote the history for ten thousand years wants to be named a marquis three thousand miles away.He expresses his aspirations in poems, and he has the great wish to make friends with famous people all over the country, and to visit Taoists in the capital.After entering Beijing, under the guidance of his father, who was the doctor of the Ministry of Justice at the time, he visited Lu Xianji, Wang Maoyin, Zhao Yu and other Anhui officials in Beijing, and won their respect and appreciation; With a broad horizon, Jiachen (juren) and Dingwei (Jinshi) who were on the same list as him at that time were full of talents. .As far as the imperial examination is concerned, Pan Shien, the chief examiner who was born in Huizhou merchants and a Suzhou family, and Weng Xincun (sun Qiangming's teacher), who was Li Hongzhang's teacher, formed his worldview of worldly and practical when Li Hongzhang was an editor of the Imperial Academy. All of them were enlightening to a certain extent; and the noble gentry in southern Jiangsu led by Pan and Weng also gave great support to Li Hongzhang's formation of the Huai Army and its rapid rise in Jiangsu.However, what made Li Hongzhang most fortunate was that he posted a post under the disciple of Zeng Guofan, a great Confucian in Hunan Province, as a son of the Nian family at the time of Yibing (that is, 1845︱1846) after he failed the first examination. The study of managing the world has laid the foundation for a lifetime of career and thinking.

Zeng Guofan can be said to be the noble person in Li Hongzhang's life.As an important minister in the Qing Dynasty, Zeng Guofan was quite good at dealing with officials.Li Hongzhang worshiped Zeng Guofan as his teacher, which played a key role in his personal development. The fledgling Li Hongzhang wanted to seize every opportunity to achieve a career. At the beginning of the third year of Xianfeng (1853), when Li Hongzhang learned of the news that the Taiping Army had invaded Anhui, he encouraged Lu Xianji, the left servant of the Ministry of Industry, to play the memorial, and wrote the memorial overnight on his behalf.In the play, Emperor Xianfeng ordered Lu to be the minister of Anhui regiment training. Lu said to Li: "If you harm me, your superiors order me to go;So Li Hongzhang and Lu Xianji returned to Anhui together.In the following year, Li Wen'an, Li Hongzhang's father, was also recommended by Wang Maoyin to return to his hometown to do group training.The Li family's father and son's group training is neat and available.Li Hongzhang successively accompanied Zhou Tianjue, Li Jiaduan, Lu Xianji, Fuji and other Qing court officials to fight against Taiping Army and Nian Army in central Anhui.

Li Hongzhang led the army as a scholar, not only has the record of specializing in wave warfare, but also has the notoriety of turning the Hanlin into a green forest.Several years of team training has made him gradually understand the way to be a general, not to win or lose at the moment, and not to show off the courage of a man.In October of the fifth year of Xianfeng (1855), he led a regiment to recapture Luzhou, and he was ordered to hand it over to the Military Aircraft Office to record his name for use by the Taoist government.In the following year, he was rewarded with the title of inspector for the military exploits of overcoming Wuwei, Chaoxian and Hanshan.However, high meritorious deeds are easy to be envied. For a while, slander was everywhere, and Li Hongzhang could hardly stand on his own in the village.In the seventh year of Xianfeng (1857), Anhui Fuji reported to Li Hongzhang and Ding You to keep the system for his father, thus ending his five-year group training activities.The following year, when the Taiping army fell into Luzhou again, Li Hongzhang fled with his family and moved to Nanchang, where he lived with his brother Li Hanzhang.At the end of the ninth year of Xianfeng (1859), he himself went to the camp of Zeng Guofan's Hunan Army in Jianchang to serve as an aide.

Through Zeng Guofan's intentional teaching, Li Hongzhang gradually got rid of some bad habits after studying sincerely, and became more mature and stable, and more experienced and prudent in doing things.Some of Li Hongzhang's thoughts were also influenced by Zeng Guofan. At the corner of history, Li Hongzhang once again seized the opportunity. In the tenth year of Xianfeng (1860), after the Taiping Army broke through the Jiangnan camp for the second time, the Qing government lost the last main force of the economic control army in the entire lower reaches of the Yangtze River.Under the fierce attack of the Taiping Army, the gentry and landlords in the south of the Yangtze River fled to Shanghai, which was already an isolated island.In order to avoid the catastrophe, the compradors of the gentry in Shanghai prepared the Sino-foreign defense bureau and relied on Western mercenaries to protect Shanghai; on the other hand, they sent Qian Dingming and others as representatives to Anqing to ask Zeng Guofan to send reinforcements.Zeng Guofan originally planned to send Zeng Guoquan to lead troops to aid the East, but Zeng Guoquan wanted to capture Tianjing and make his first contribution, and he was unwilling to go to Shanghai.Later, Zeng Guofan invited Chen Shijie, a veteran general of the Hunan Army, to go to Shanshan, but Chen Yimu resigned.When Zeng Guofan sent all the people around him but refused to go, he thought of Li Hongzhang, and Li Hongzhang readily accepted the order.So, he began to form his own direct line Huai army.

Looking at Li Hongzhang's life, the most important thing for him is to set up the Westernization Movement and diplomatic activities. The Westernization Movement emerged in the 1860s.Due to the rise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the defeat of the Second Opium War, some far-sighted people put forward the idea of ​​learning from the advanced affairs of the West.Although they have different backgrounds and statuses, they have one thing in common, that is, while learning from the West, they do not abandon China's inherent traditions.Inside the imperial court, some ministers also participated in the Westernization Movement.Among them, the more famous ones are Yixin, Wenxiang, Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong, and so on.Those who advocated the Westernization Movement were called the Westernization School in modern history.Li Hongzhang began to buy weapons from foreigners since he knew the magical effect of sharp weapons, but the weapons he bought were expensive and not enough for use.As a result, Li Hongzhang had a strong desire to establish China's own military industry.And he believes that it is more important to train a large number of corresponding military personnel.The talented and careful Li Hongzhang once calculated an account: a round of ordinary British shells sold for 30 taels of silver in the market, and 10,000 rounds of copper hat shells sold for 19 taels of silver.Why did the Qing Dynasty give the white money to foreigners?

Li Hongzhang's good wishes were immediately met with opposition from all sides.Li Hongzhang wrote to the Prime Minister’s Yamen headed by Yixin, saying: Chinese literati are obsessed with the words and sentences of the articles and practice writing small characters every day, while the generals are mostly vulgar and stupid people. Some people think that there is no need to learn foreign weapons, and some people think that Can't learn.In the memorial, Li Hongzhang strongly expressed his opinion, and described the magic of steam power operation in this way: machines such as turning wood, perforating, screwing, and casting bombs are all coiled in a steam furnace, filled with water and blazing charcoal, and the water is full of steam. The opening is from a copper throat to the air cylinder, and an iron pillar is connected in the cylinder, which rises and falls with the air, moves the iron wheel, and the wheel is tied with a belt, which is tied around the axis and connected to each other. Indulgence does not rely on human movement.In the Qing Empire, where almost no one knew that there was a steam engine in the world, Li Hongzhang was able to observe the operation principle of the steam engine so carefully, which is really amazing.

Li Hongzhang worked tirelessly for the Westernization Movement.In a closed-door environment, under the obstruction of diehards, the Westernization Movement finally failed.But this action of Li Hongzhang is worthy of recognition. The influence of the Westernization Movement cannot be ignored, and its achievements are obvious to all.During the Westernization Movement, Li Hongzhang created many historical records of China's first: the first machine manufacturing bureau, the first machine weaving layout, the first telegraph bureau, the first naval base, the first ocean-going navy, the first The foreign gun team, the first foreign language translation center, the first railway, and the first batch of government-sent foreign students.These are remarkable achievements.

Faced with the obstacles of the feudal diehards within the Qing court, Li Hongzhang once eloquently proposed that it is a time when people like to talk about Westernization.He believes that in the process of pursuing self-improvement, we must adhere to the general outline of Westernization that requires harmony outside and reform inside. The construction of self-strengthening of Westernization wins as much peaceful time as possible.For this reason, he prided himself on being a diplomatic expert throughout his life and handled many major foreign affairs. In front of the building of the Qing government that was about to collapse, he seemed so helpless. He knew that it was something that could not be done, but he walked on helplessly.He did these things because he wanted to keep his official position, but more because he had no choice but to do so. Li Hongzhang's life was tragic and desolate.Although he prided himself on being a diplomatic expert, he failed to change the passive diplomacy of the Qing Dynasty and the situation of ceding land and paying compensation.In the end, he passed away with regret. editor September 2010