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发表于 2008-2-13 16:31:45| 字数 3,399| - 中国–上海–上海 联通
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Lin Zexu
An official loyal to the Qing court, Lin Zexu was most famous as a national hero for his active fight against foreign-imported opium during the Qing Dynasty. Although he did not want a war between China and Great Britain, his aggressive anti-opium policies are usually considered to be the primary catalyst for the First Opium War, forcing China into signing the unequal treaties.
Lin was born on August 30, 1785 in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. Until he was 17 years old, he assisted his father as a maker of artificial flowers. Aided by a wealthy friend, whose daughter he married, he became a student, successfully passed the different examinations and received the highest degree in 1811. He rose rapidly through various grades of provincial service, and became Governor of Hunan and Hubei provinces in 1837. He had successfully stopped opium consumption in an inland province and suggested to the emperor ways to suppress the opium trade. As a formidable bureaucrat known for his thoroughness and integrity, he was appointed as an imperial commissioner and sent to Guangzhou to halt the importation of opium by the British prior to the First Opium War in 1838. He fought against what he saw as the pernicious evil of the opium trade, and the shameless way in which foreign opium merchants regularly flouted edicts banning opium. He particularly despised the officials that cooperated secretly with these merchants for their own private gain. He confiscated more than 20,000 chests of opium already at the port and supervised their destruction. He later blockaded the port from European ships. He also wrote a letter of understanding, of a type known as a memorial to Queen Victoria of Britain, warning her that China was adopting a stricter policy towards everyone, Chinese or foreign, who brought opium into China. This letter expressed a desire that Victoria would act "in accordance with decent feeling" and support his efforts.
However, Victoria never received the letter and, by 1840, the British moved north and beat the Chinese troop in Tianjin, severely weakening the Qing government. The advent of the Opium War meant that Lin fell out of favor. He lost his position and was sent into exile as remote as to Yili, Xinjiang. A capable man as he was, he did much to the benefit of the area. And the Qing court still considered him to be an official of rare virtue, and sent him off to take care of difficult situations. He died on November 22, 1850 while on the way to Guangxi, to help put down the Taiping Rebellion. If he had a chance to crack down hard on the Taiping like the other ethnic Han generals did, then he might be evaluated differently.
Though he was a patriot of ability who attained an international reputation as "Commissioner Lin", he lacked in statesmanship and was opposed to the opening of the country. Anyway, he felt the need of a better knowledge of foreigners, which drove him to collect much material for geography of the world. This was given to another hand, also anti-foreign, and in 1844 his great Geography was published in 50 books.
While a museum was built at the former site of his inspection tour in Macau, a memorial was founded in Fuzhou in 1982. The site, covering an area of 3,000 square meters, used to be the memorial temple of Lin, built in 1905. June 3, the day when Lin confiscated the crates of opium, is celebrated as Anti-Smoking Day in Taiwan.
The film "Lin Zexu" was made by Shanghai Haiyan Film Studio in 1958, the era of Great Leap Forward, after the Anti-Rightists Movement. Understandably, the crew's attempt to maximize what really happened in the history was mitigated by the general political environment of the time. One of the examples was that in this film, the protagonist's relatives were the opium addicts, too, which was part of the reason he wanted to ban opium. This important part was omitted due to the political pressure to make patriots perfect, but less than a decade later the crew was persecuted for eulogizing feudalism and its officials for the same movie during the Cultural |
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