After hard work and thrift, Yan and his son have reached the level of a well-off family in the third generation, and the population has begun to increase exponentially. As the saying goes, "There is more than enough food and clothing, and courtesy and righteousness erupt", so they use these two maxims to ask the younger generation to study hard in order to make progress. Soon, the third generation of Yanzi Ren and Yanzi Chun began to enter the feudal officialdom. Yan Zichun failed 14 times in a row. At the age of 64, he became the first subject with Gong Sheng qualification in Changning County (Changning County subject: Changning County, now Xinfeng County). Discipline, the official name, is equivalent to the current deputy director of the county education bureau. )。 Although the disciplinary official position was small, it also made the "state people proud" at that time. Yan Zichun's official career marks the emergence of Yan as a new resident in the new district. In the fifth generation, Yan Xisheng was admitted to the Hanlin in Yongzheng Dynasty on 1723, and Yan was appointed as the governor and assistant minister of Guizhou. Later, Yan's son inspected Sun and Yi Sui, both officials of the governor. This further pushed the Yan family from "the nation is proud of it" to the heyday of "one door, three generations, four governors, five departments, ten provinces and eight flowers" and became one of the 28 bureaucratic families in the Qing Dynasty.
In the more than 200 years from Kangxi of Qing Dynasty to the end of Guangxu, in a small family with less than 1,000 people (male), there were three second-class scholars (namely Hanlin), one third-class scholar, 2 1 juren, and nearly 50 people (excluding scholars and Guo Jian students). Among them, Yan Xisheng (the same name as Jin Shengtan in Yongzheng period) is famous all over the country for exposing the fraud cases in feudal examination rooms; He Yanyue (calligrapher, with the same name as Lian) of the same brothers; Yan, a patriot who actively resisted Britain in the Opium War; Yan Yisui, who is loyal to his duties and cares for the Yellow River for more than ten years without an accident; There are also writers Yan Ershi (author of Textual Research on the Four Books and Collected Works of Sifutang) and Yan Xiaoyuan (author of Ophthalmology Contract); There are also famous literati Yan Peihu, Yan Zhonglai and Yan Dahua. In addition, there are more than 60 officials above grade seven. It was really prosperous at that time.
However, after Xianfeng, even the Yanshi family still had ministers, officials and official posts, but compared with the Yong, Gan, Jia and Dao periods, its prominence began to be inferior, and even gradually declined with the decline of the Qing Dynasty. During the thirty years from the collapse of the Qing Dynasty to the liberation (that is, the period of the Republic of China), Lian's family began to divide. Some people have turned to other occupations because of bankruptcy; Some people are still enjoying the shadow of their ancestors, smoking (opium) gambling, spending flowers and weeding until they spend all their possessions and still do not repent. They have been wearing hollow robes and dragging their tails, struggling to support the empty shelf of "scholarly family"; Other people, such as Yan Gongshu, Yan Juquan, Yan Zhonghua, Yan Shiguang, Yan Gantang, Yan Zezi, Yan Jianhua, Yan, Yan Baohua, etc., have all been appointed as officials, but compared with the previous generation, they are simply dwarfed. After liberation, most members of the Yan family have undergone qualitative changes: most people have accepted the policy of the * * * production party and become self-reliant workers after transformation. Especially after the downfall of the Gang of Four, the principles and policies of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party have been implemented, and the political, economic and cultural life of the vast majority of the Yan family has been significantly improved. A considerable number of people have reached the level of a well-off family. There are many millions of households who get rich through labor, and the number of people who go to college is increasing year by year. No wonder some people say that they were ashamed of being an official in the Qing Dynasty, smoking and gambling in the Republic of China, and the local owners in the early days of liberation. After the downfall of the Gang of Four, there were many construction workers. 1990 years later, there were more college students, and even Yan's descendants began to embark on the road of "taking poetry and books as their capital and taking business as their business". This statement is basically in line with historical facts.
Some people think that the prosperity of Yan family in Lianping lies in the good feng shui of 24 mountains (that is, there are good graves to bury), and the decline of Yan family is also due to the passing of Longteng Gorge. Cattle-shaped and building-shaped (cow-shaped and building-shaped) are the ancestral graves of Yan family. According to feudal superstition, one is to be rich, and the other is to be expensive. ) and so on have become the so-called "feng shui tail". This is really nonsense. Because every family has a difficult experience, which is the law of historical development. Isn't it because Cao Xueqin's Jia family members are pampered and groggy that they are defeated? From this perspective, although there are many reasons for the rise and fall of a family, it is inseparable from the social background and historical conditions at that time, and it is also inseparable from human factors. "Feng Shui" is not credible.