The fatal disaster caused by a couplet: the death of Ye Dehui

On April 1927, 1 1, organizations from all walks of life in Hunan held a "trial meeting of farmers' associations" in Changsha. A gentry named Ye Dehui was shot in the literacy ridge outside Liucheng Bridge on charges of "feudal remnants, a leader of gentry". Many historical materials excavated in recent years have recorded this point. For example, in June, 2006, xiaoxiang morning herald published Liu Jianyong's article "The Life of Ye Dehui from Changsha". According to records, people who used to pick manure for Ye's family went in and out through the back door. 1927, when the Northern Expedition Revolutionary Army occupied Changsha, dung people went in and out from the front door without saying hello to Ye. Ye Dehui thought it ruined his geomantic omen, so he grabbed the dung worker and punched him. The dung worker ran to the peasant association next door to sue. The peasant association went to mediate, but Ye Dehui ignored it. So the peasant association handed the matter over to the special court. The court ruled that Ye Dehui should pay 3000 yuan or 4000 yuan to the scavengers. Ye Dehui not only refused to lose money, but also made a couplet for the farmers' association: prosperity of agriculture, prosperity of rice, and hybridization of wheat and millet; The field is vast, and horses, cows, sheep, chickens and dogs are all animals. The horizontal approval is: guest supervisor card purchase. This completely angered the special court of the peasant association and sentenced Ye to death on five charges, including "hating the reformists before the Qing Dynasty". Liu Zhixun's Memory of Ma Ri incident also recorded the same event: "Ye Dehui's couplet is" a long-term agricultural transportation, rice, wheat and millet, a kind of hybrid; The venue is vast, and horses, cows, sheep, chickens, dogs and pigs are all animals. " The Kuomintang officers who launched the campaign also mentioned this in the Changsha Shovel: Ye's couplets were written before the execution. "Ye is a famous scholar in China. Before the execution, Ye said to the person in charge of him: "I have a couplet for you:' The agricultural movement is wide open, the rice is bright, the wheat is millet, and the general is an asshole; The venue was enlarged, and horses, cows, sheep, chickens and dogs flocked to it. ""In a word, this couplet attracted fatal disaster. Wu, Feng Tianzhu, Xie Juezhai and Dai Heyi were the members of the special court who signed the death penalty. Among them, Feng Tianzhu, the chief procurator of the Hunan Provincial Senior Procuratorate in Ng? Thì Nh?m, was then a senior military judge in Hunan Province, and Dai and Xie Juezhai were both supervisory members of the Kuomintang Hunan Provincial Party Department at that time, and Yi was the head of the Hunan Peasant Association.

Ye Dehui (1864-1April, 927 1 1), whose name is Huan Bin, whose name is Yu Shui, is called Zhishan, and he is a self-styled Zhu Ting mountaineer and the owner of Li Xun. Because smallpox is also called cotyledon hemp. His ancestral home is Wuxian, Jiangsu (now Suzhou), and his father Ye Yucun moved to Changsha, Hunan during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and later took Xiangtan as his domicile. He entered school at the age of eight and studied the four books, Shuo Wen Jie Zi, Zi Tong Zhi Jian and other ancient philology. 17 years old studying at Yuelu College. Guangxu 11th year (1885) rose to imperial academy. Seven years later, he was admitted to imperial academy. In may of the same year, he was appointed as the principal of the department of official affairs. After resigning from his post, he returned to his hometown to study, give speeches and engrave books. Ye Dehui's political thoughts tend to be conservative. Together with his teacher Wang Xianqian, he opposed the reform and supported the restoration of the monarchy.

Afterwards, his letter from the cotyledon Shang Nong to Japan's Matsuzaki Roufu (published in the 5th issue of the Literature Union edited by Shigeo Hashikawa) revealed his father's cause of death:

Today, all the scenes of my father's death will be sobbed. My father was arrested at home by the agricultural and industrial circles at 6 pm on the seventh day of March in the solar calendar and sent to Changsha County Department. Immediately urged all important people to come out to rescue, all invalid. On the tenth day of the first month, he was transferred from Changsha county to the special court and arraigned at three o'clock in the afternoon, suspected of criminal law and monarchy. At four o'clock, he was sent to the literacy ridge outside Liuyang City and shot. He was shot twice, one in the head and one in the center, and he was killed. Oh, it hurts! On that day, the whole family fled for fear of being caught, and their wives and children were separated and extremely afraid. All the books at home, as well as inscriptions, calligraphy and painting, bronze manuscripts, the application of gold, silver, pearls and jade, clothes and utensils, were taken away by them. There are only a few books, rubbings and editions at home, all of which belong to Zhongshan Library. Now I really ask my friends to dredge it, so I didn't move it elsewhere. Take the residence as the museum site, set up an office to manage the people and hear the funeral. There are few rare books in the books of Song and Yuan Dynasties. This matter has not been solved so far. The family of the thorn people, big and small, is hermaphrodite, living in seclusion so far, fleeing everywhere and still not reunited. I don't know what the law is. The recent works of Xian Yan, such as Cang Shu in Guangutang, Chronicle, Poems and Confucian Classics, are all neglected. Carved on a friend's letter. I don't know if I can return it. Because of this, prickly people are now displaced, unable to sleep, and look very lost. If they are crazy, all their difficulties will be exhausted. Know me like a brother, how to teach it and how to save it! Ye Shangnong, a prickly man, nodded tearfully on July 14 in the summer calendar.

Ye Dehui is good at edition bibliography, loves collecting books and compiling books, and is famous for engraving books. His famous saying is "If my wife doesn't borrow books, neither will she". He put erotic pictures in the book, which is said to avoid Zhu Rong and prevent fire. He compiled the Bibliography of Guan Gu Tang, Lin Shu Hua Qing, Summer Tables of Ancient and Modern Times, and published The Secret History of Yuan Dynasty. Lin Shu Hua Qing is China's first truly systematic book history, which describes various rigid, letterpress and color-matching printing methods since the Tang and Song Dynasties in the form of notes. Liang Qichao once commented that "the origin and story of book engraving are very good." Xie guozhen, a historian, commented in the article "A Study on the Origin of Printing Collection": "Ye is a local tyrant in Hunan, and it is really undesirable for him to go in and out of Gongmen Fish Village ... But he is good at the study of catalogues, and he can take historical materials by himself and open the way for future generations to study."