Li Wen'an

The China Biographical Database (CBDB), drawing on the Qingdai renwu shengzu nianbiao (Table of the Birth and Death Years of Qing Figures), records that Li Wen’an was born on the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth month of the sixth year of the Jiaqing reign (February 1, 1802) and died in the fifth year of the Xianfeng reign (1855), and gives his native place as Hefei, Anhui. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period gives his dates as 1801–1855, his courtesy name as Shihe and his original personal name as Wengan; his literary name is printed there as Wuquan, with the character yu (making it Yuquan) added in square brackets, and CBDB also lists two further names, each romanised Yuquan but written with other characters. The Academia Sinica digital archive’s introduction to Li Hongzhang likewise gives the dates of his father, Li Wen’an, as 1801–1855.⁠[1][2][3]

A 2009 China News Service report says that the Li family’s ancestors were originally surnamed Xu and moved from Hukou in Jiangxi to Hefei during the Ming dynasty to escape unrest; Li Xinzhuang, of the ninth generation, had no son, and Xu Yingxi, a relative by marriage in the same village, gave him his second son, Zishen, as heir, who then took the surname Li. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period likewise says that an ancestor eight generations before Li Hongzhang was born into a family named Xu and changed his surname when he was adopted into the Li family, and gives Li Hongzhang’s native place as Hefei (Luzhou), Anhui.⁠[4][2]

An article by Liu Liping published in the Guangzhou Daily in 2014 says that Li Wen’an’s father, Li Dianhua, was a farmer’s son who had hoped to change his lot through the examinations but gave up after failing twice, and lived in the countryside on a few dozen mu of poor land with a tiled house of three courtyards; with a large household, little land and no other income, the family lived on borrowed money. The article quotes a family letter from Li Hongzhang to his younger brother, Li Hezhang, saying that their grandfather had been poor and hard-pressed and that at the end of each year creditors came in droves. Zhou Juchu, a well-off relative by marriage, often helped Li Dianhua and urged him to be thrifty and to send his sons and grandsons to school without delay; Li Hongzhang wrote in the letter that their grandfather followed this advice and that the family owed its later position to it.⁠[5]

Liu Liping writes that Li Dianhua urged his four sons to make something of themselves by passing the examinations at every level so that the family could rise for good; the first of the four to become a xiucai was the fourth son, Li Wen’an, who went on to pass the provincial and metropolitan examinations, after which the Li family became one of the prominent families of Luzhou prefecture. The article gives his age as 35 when he passed the provincial examination and 39 when he became a jinshi, and says that the family’s rise gathered pace in his generation.⁠[5]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period records him as a jinshi of 1838 and therefore a classmate of Zeng Guofan from the same examination, and the Encyclopedia of World Biography also says that he and Zeng both received the jinshi degree in 1838. BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry writes that he and Zeng both took the terminal degrees of the Confucian examinations, earning the status of “advanced scholars.”⁠[2][6][7]

An article by Guan Shanyuan (first published in the Xinhua Daily Telegraph and reprinted in Wenzhaibao in 2015) says that Li Wen’an and Zeng Guofan obtained the jinshi degree in the same year, a relationship then called tongnian (“same year”), and that this bond counted for much in officialdom, tying them emotionally and making them from then on a community of shared official interests.⁠[8]

Wei Runshen, an associate professor at the College of Liberal Arts of Capital Normal University, said in a television conversation printed in the Wenhui Reading Weekly in 2009 that after Li Wen’an took office in the capital he wrote to Li Hongzhang telling him to come to Beijing at once to study and prepare for the next year’s Shuntian provincial examination. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period instead says that Li Hongzhang went to Beijing after passing the provincial examination in 1844 and studied intensively there under Zeng Guofan’s direction, and that Zeng thereafter became his patron and close friend.⁠[9][2]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography writes that it was because Li Wen’an and Zeng Guofan had both received the jinshi degree in 1838 that Li Hongzhang became Zeng’s student in the capital. Guan Shanyuan writes that Li Hongzhang came to Zeng as a nianjiazi, the son of a fellow graduate, that he was 23 when he became Zeng’s student, and that Zeng first met him in Nian’er Lane in Beijing; a 2025 question-and-answer piece by Ju Hai in The Paper explains that Li Hongzhang, eleven years younger than Zeng, was Zeng’s nianjiazi, the son of his fellow graduate Li Wen’an. The Academia Sinica digital archive writes that Li Wen’an and Zeng were on good terms, and that Li Hongzhang was therefore taught by Zeng after failing an earlier examination.⁠[6][8][10][3]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period records that Li Hongzhang became a jinshi in 1847 and was selected a bachelor of the Hanlin Academy. Wei Runshen said in the conversation that after the jinshi degree Li Hongzhang became a Hanlin compiler while his father, Li Wen’an, was serving in the Board of Punishments (Wei called him a censor of that board), so that father and son were officials in the capital at the same time, which Wei regarded as rare in the Qing empire.⁠[2][9]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that when the forces of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom reached Anhui in 1853, Li Hongzhang and his father, Li Wen’an, returned to their native place to organize militia against them. The Encyclopedia of World Biography says that in 1853 father and son were ordered to return to Anhui to organize the local militia against the Taiping and Nian rebels, and Britannica that when their home area was threatened, Li Hongzhang and his father organized a local militia.⁠[2][6][7]

Wei Runshen recounted that when Li Hongzhang came home to consult his father, Li Wen’an reminded him that he often drafted memorials for Lü Xianji and urged him to go to Lü again so that the two could submit a joint memorial asking for more troops and for militia to be raised; Wei said that Lü, as senior vice-president of the Board of Punishments, ranked above Li Wen’an, who was only a censor of that board, and carried more weight, which was why Li Wen’an sent his son to Lü for a joint memorial. The Xianfeng Emperor’s edict that Wei then quoted, however, names Lü as junior vice-president of the Board of Works.⁠[9]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period records that Li Wen’an died on July 6, 1855, and that the exigencies of war required Li Hongzhang to remain in camp unofficially instead of retiring to observe the period of mourning. Britannica likewise says that when his father died in 1855, Li Hongzhang stayed at his post unofficially, in defiance of the traditional Confucian mourning retirement.⁠[2][7]

A 2017 Anhui Business Daily report published by The Paper says that the 75th birthday of Li Hongzhang’s mother fell at the time of the 40th birthday of Empress Dowager Cixi, and that in the 13th year of the Tongzhi reign (1874) the Tongzhi Emperor issued an edict of commendation which described the mother of Li Hongzhang, grand secretary, governor-general of Zhili and earl of the first class, and of Li Hanzhang, governor-general of Huguang, as nearly eighty years old, and granted her a plaque in the emperor’s own hand reading Songyun Yishou (longevity like the pine and the bamboo), together with a ruyi sceptre and silk for robes; the edict was later carved on a stone tablet.⁠[11]

The report says that the edict tablet stands in the courtyard of the former Li Hongzhang family temple in Yuwan Village, Modian Community, Hefei, the only place where Li descendants worship the direct ancestors of their branch; during repairs in 2017 the courtyard held eight relics, including the edict tablet, stone lion heads, stone drums and a horse trough, which were to be moved into an indoor exhibition hall.⁠[11]

The British author Bland’s biography of Li Hongzhang (a Chinese translation was excerpted in the China Reading Weekly on July 20, 2016) reproduces Li Hongzhang’s memorial printed in the Peking Gazette on May 16, 1882: his mother, Li Wen’an’s wife, whose own family was also surnamed Li, had lived for more than ten years in the official residence of his elder brother, Li Hanzhang, governor-general of Huguang, and was then 83 and had always been in good health. The book says that she died in Li Hanzhang’s residence in Wuchang in the spring of 1882.⁠[12]

The book says that her funeral was grand and imposing and displayed the wealth and power the Li family had gained over the previous twenty years; her ancestral tablet was installed in the Li family hall in an elaborate ceremony attended by many high officials, who honoured her as the mother who had raised two sons to be governors-general. Gathered at her grave were Li Hongzhang’s elder brother, Li Hanzhang, his two younger brothers, twenty grandsons and eight great-grandsons.⁠[12]

Li Wen’an had six sons: an article reprinted in People’s Digest in 2009 says that after Li Hongzhang rose to power the six brothers bought large amounts of land in their home region in Anhui and built manor-style residences, the largest with several hundred mu of land and the smaller ones with a hundred or so.⁠[13]

Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period records that Li Hongzhang’s elder brother, Li Hanzhang (courtesy name Xiaoquan, 1821–1899), served as governor-general at Wuchang (1867, 1870–1875, 1876–1882) and at Guangzhou (1889–1895); Li Hongzhang was born on February 15, 1823, and died on November 7, 1901. Liu Liping writes that after Li Hongzhang became a leading official he wrote to his younger brother, Li Hezhang, recalling the family’s early poverty, and that he urged Li Hezhang to share the family’s burdens, and Wei Runshen recounted that as a boy Li Hongzhang often flew kites with his elder brother, Li Hanzhang, and his younger brother, Li Hezhang. The People’s Digest article names Li Zhaoqing as Li Hongzhang’s sixth brother, and Bland’s book says that Li Zhaoqing had died by the time Li Hongzhang adopted his son.⁠[2][5][9][13][12]

Among his grandchildren, Li Zhaoqing’s son Li Jingfang (1855–1934) was adopted by Li Hongzhang as his eldest son. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period writes that Li Hongzhang’s hereditary rank passed first to his son Li Jingshu and then to Li Jingshu’s son, Li Guojie, who was minister to Belgium from 1910 to 1912, and that Li Hongzhang’s youngest son, Li Jingmai, was minister to Austria from 1905 to 1907. Bland’s book calls Li Hongzhang’s nephew Li Jingxi, a former governor-general of Yunnan and Guizhou, the most famous and most respected of the later members of the Li family. Li Hongzhang also married his daughter, Li Juou, to Zhang Peilun, and the couple lived in the Li household after their marriage.⁠[13][2][12][14]

Wei Runshen recounted that once, when the boy Li Hongzhang missed his midday lessons, Li Wen’an angrily took him to the edge of the family’s fields, asked him whether he knew why there were so many graves beside their land and whether he liked their land, and then explained to him that it was because their forebears had not risen through the examinations into office that the family had been allotted the land next to the graves; Li Hongzhang stood stunned for a long time. Wei said that Li Hongzhang later also heard from his mother that because his grandfather’s generation had not passed the examinations and become officials, the family had declined and been given only land beside the graves.⁠[9]