Weng Tonghe

Weng Tonghe was born on May 19, 1830 (the Gregorian date given in Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, edited by Arthur W. Hummel), and was a native of Changshu, Jiangsu. Hummel’s work calls him the youngest son of the Grand Secretary Weng Xincun, as does an article by Lu Beirong; the website of the Changshu Municipal People’s Government calls him the third son of Weng Xincun, Grand Secretary of the Tiren Hall.⁠[1][2][3][4]

Hummel’s work lists his courtesy names as Shengjie, Renfu and Shengfu, and his style names as Shuping, Songchan, Pingsheng and Yunzhai; the Palace Museum entry gives his courtesy name as Shengfu and his style name as Shuping, and the Changshu government website also gives the names Pinglu and Songchan.⁠[1][3][2]

Lin Shao writes that as a youth he was already known locally for his calligraphy, and that his fame as a calligrapher grew after he took first place in the palace examination.⁠[5]

In 1838, the eighteenth year of the Daoguang reign, his father Weng Xincun resigned as vice-minister of the Court of Judicial Review and returned to Changshu to care for his mother; over the next eight years he saw her to the end of her life, mourned her and built her tomb.⁠[4]

Lu Beirong writes that on the fourth day of the second month of the twenty-ninth year of the Daoguang reign (February 22, 1849), Weng Xincun set out north by boat with his wife, née Xu, his second daughter Xuanhua and his youngest son Weng Tonghe; on the twenty-sixth day of the third month (April 18) they passed Huangcun and Fengtai, entered Beijing by the Youan Gate and moved into official lodgings on Bingmasi Middle Street outside the Xuanwu Gate.⁠[4]

In 1856, the sixth year of the Xianfeng reign, he took first place in the imperial examinations, becoming zhuangyuan, and was appointed a compiler of the Hanlin Academy. An essay by the historian Guo Xuming says that at 19 he placed first in the examination for senior licentiates (bagong) and first on the main list of the qualifying examination, then served in Beijing as a minor capital official, and that he became zhuangyuan at 27.⁠[1][2][6][7]

Hummel’s work says that two years later, in 1858, he was assistant director of the Shaanxi provincial examination, under the chief examiner Pan Zuyin; the Changshu government website says that he served as an examiner for Shaanxi and Gansu. Guo Xuming’s essay says that at 29 he was appointed education commissioner of Shanxi and that at 30 he asked to be relieved of the post because of an ailment of the foot, which was granted.⁠[1][2][7]

Guo Xuming’s essay says that at 33, back in Beijing after serving as chief examiner of the Shanxi provincial examination, he was appointed Admonisher of the Right Secretariat in the Supervisorate of Imperial Instruction, an office of only the junior sixth rank; when he took up the post on the second day of the seventh lunar month of the first year of the Tongzhi reign (1862), the clerks by custom asked four taels of silver for preparing his memorial and the runners twenty strings of cash, but he was willing to pay only twenty-eight strings, which his subordinates firmly refused. The essay also says that his father Weng Xincun died in the eleventh lunar month of that year.⁠[7]

An article in Huanqiu Renwu (Global People) says that on March 7, 1865, the fourth year of the Tongzhi reign, he found at a bookshop in Liulichang a Song-dynasty edition of the rhyme dictionary Jiyun that had once belonged to the collector Qian Zeng; the owner at first refused to sell it, and he returned on six successive days before he bought it.⁠[8]

His eldest brother Weng Tongshu died in the tenth lunar month of the fourth year of the Tongzhi reign (1865). Late in 1865 he was appointed to serve in the Hongde Hall as tutor to the Tongzhi Emperor (the Changshu government website says that he did so with the rank of Right Director of Instruction); Hummel’s work says that his duties included expounding the historical work Zhiping baojian to the regent empresses.⁠[7][1][2]

Guo Xuming’s essay says that in 1866, the fifth year of the Tongzhi reign, he rose from the lower to the middle ranks of officialdom, and that his diary for that year records how short of money the household was: only after borrowing a hundred taels could he settle his debts.⁠[7]

Guo Xuming’s essay says that at the end of the seventh lunar month of the seventh year of the Tongzhi reign (1868) he went home to bury his father and elder brother, and at the same time his wife; the essay suggests that the local officials of Suzhou may have thought that Weng Xincun and Weng Tongshu had died too long before for condolence gifts still to be due, so he had to ask his father-in-law Tang Xiu, whom he had not seen for a long time, for a loan of 100 silver dollars, and then another 100, before he could get back to Changshu.⁠[7]

He was libationer (head) of the Imperial Academy from 1868 to 1871 and a sub-chancellor of the Grand Secretariat from 1871 to 1876.⁠[1]

The Tongzhi Emperor died early in 1875; later that year Weng was appointed to serve in the Yuqing Palace as tutor to the child Guangxu Emperor, instructing him in the classics and other subjects together with Sun Jianai, while another tutor, Xia Tongshan (1831–1880), taught calligraphy. Hummel’s work says that Weng began teaching the Emperor in 1876 and that the relationship lasted 22 years, until he left office; the Changshu government website says that he was tutor to two emperors for 30 years.⁠[1][2]

Li Lin’s article in China Reading Weekly cites his diary account of the succession after the Tongzhi Emperor’s death, which records the reasons given by the Empress Dowager Cixi: that the Xianfeng Emperor had no second son, and that the heir had to be young enough to be educated.⁠[9]

Hummel’s work lists his offices in this period as vice-president of the Board of Revenue (1876–1878), president of the Censorate (1878–1879), president of the Board of Punishments (1879) and president of the Board of Works (1876–1886). The Palace Museum entry likewise lists him as vice-president of the Board of Revenue, president of the Censorate and president of the Boards of Punishments, Works and Revenue; the Changshu government website also lists the posts of sub-chancellor of the Grand Secretariat and vice-president of the Board of Punishments.⁠[1][3][2]

During the Ili dispute with Russia he, Pan Zuyin and two princes, whom Hummel romanizes as I-huan and I-tsung, formed an inner cabinet to deal with the crisis.⁠[1]

At court he spoke out frankly; he asked for the rebuilding of the Yuanmingyuan to be stopped and for all construction work in the palace to be curtailed, and he helped to overturn the verdict in the case of Yang Naiwu and Xiaobaicai.⁠[2][6]

He was a Grand Councillor from 1882 to 1884, before the Guangxu Emperor took personal rule; in April 1884, in the reshuffle of that year, he was removed from the Grand Council together with the other councillors, but kept his other posts, including the tutorship of the Guangxu Emperor. During the Sino-French War he favoured war.⁠[1][10][3][2]

Early in 1886 he became president of the Board of Revenue and held the post for twelve years, until he left office. Hummel’s work says that he did not agree with Zhang ZhidongZhang ZhidongZhang Zhidong (1837–1909) was an official, scholar and educator of the late Qing dynasty and one of the leading figures of the Self-Strengthening movement. He served as governor of Shanxi and as governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi and of Hubei and Hunan, founded iron and steel, arms and textile enterprises and modern schools in Hubei, wrote the Quanxue pian (Exhortation to Learning) in 1898, and in his last years was a grand councillor and grand secretary in Beijing.Open the full entry’s policy of spending freely on reform and would have stopped Zhang’s new industries had Zhang not won the support of Prince I-huan (Hummel’s romanization).⁠[1]

An article by Zong He in The Paper says that in 1887, the thirteenth year of the Guangxu reign, he bought a Song-dynasty printed edition of the Changduan jing and called it in his diary one of the finest Song printings; Guo Xuming’s essay says that the bookseller asked 800 taels of silver and that he paid 350.⁠[11][7]

In 1888 he declined to forward a memorial by Kang YouweiKang YouweiKang Youwei (1858–1927) was a Chinese scholar, political reformer and calligrapher of the late Qing and early Republican periods and a principal promoter of the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898. After the reform was reversed he spent more than a decade in exile, founded the Baohuanghui (Chinese Empire Reform Association) and argued for constitutional monarchy; in later life he campaigned to make Confucianism the state religion. His works include The Forged Classics, Confucius as a Reformer and the Datong shu (The Great Commonwealth).Open the full entry to the throne. Luke S. K. Kwong holds that he refused because of its offensive language, its scathing tone and blunt criticisms, rather than because of any outrageously daring or original proposals; Young-tsu Wong holds that he was clearly impressed by Kang’s ideas and courage (a point Kwong calls undocumented), and that the diary phrase in which Weng called the memorial’s language provocatively straightforward plainly refers to its contents. The Shanghai Library holds Weng’s handwritten copy of Kang Youwei’s First Memorial to the Qing Emperor.⁠[12][13]

On the twenty-fifth day of the fourth month of the seventeenth year of the Guangxu reign (June 1, 1891), the Board of Revenue memorialized that the purchase of foreign guns, ships and machinery for the Northern and Southern fleets should be suspended, halting purchases of foreign ships and guns for two years from that year; the main reason given was the excessive cost of river works. The naval historian Zhang Liyuan found the memorial and published its full text in November 2024; in his note he wrote that its drafting was led by Zhang Zhiwan, the Grand Secretary then in charge of the Board, and that those taking part probably included the Board’s presidents Fukun and Weng Tonghe, and he holds that the memorial was submitted by Zhang Zhiwan and that Weng seems to have had nothing to do with it. Chen Xiaoping, by contrast, concludes from Weng’s diary that Weng was deeply involved in the memorial, that the draft was decided by Zhang Zhiwan, Fukun and Weng in consultation and that Weng may have played an active part, though whether he initiated it cannot be known.⁠[14]

Li HongzhangLi HongzhangLi Hongzhang (1823–1901) was a Chinese statesman, military commander and diplomat of the late Qing dynasty, the founder and commander of the Huai Army and one of the principal promoters of the Self-Strengthening Movement. From 1870 he served for many years as governor-general of Zhili and superintendent of trade for the northern ports, sponsored modern enterprises such as the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, the Kaiping mines, railways, telegraphs and the Beiyang Fleet, and signed treaties including the Treaty of Shimonoseki and the Boxer Protocol for the Qing government; judgments of him, in his lifetime and since, have been sharply divided.Open the full entry’s confidants and some naval historians blamed the defeat of 1894–1895 on this decision and pointed at Weng Tonghe as president of the Board of Revenue; there had also been earlier talk that the halt arose from personal enmity between Weng and Li, which Chen Xiaoping writes is clearly mistaken in view of who submitted the memorial. Chen regards the policy as rather fatal for the Beiyang Fleet (Zhang Liyuan likewise writes that the navy thereby missed the best moment to renew its armament), but argues that, since Weng firmly advocated war in 1894, to say he was taking private revenge goes too far, and that his chief error was a misjudgement of the situation, in believing that the Beiyang Fleet was fit to fight.⁠[14]

In 1894 he again became a Grand Councillor and in 1895 also a minister of the Zongli Yamen (the office for foreign affairs). Hummel’s work says that he was not on cordial terms with Li Hongzhang, their disagreement being over the First Sino-Japanese War, but that when Li was later blamed for China’s defeat, Weng is said to have persuaded the throne to deal leniently with him. During the war he advocated resistance, opposed compromise and opposed Li Hongzhang’s efforts to sue for peace.⁠[1][3][2]

Xie Junmei’s article in China Reading Weekly cites the diary’s record of words spoken by the Empress Dowager Cixi in the tenth month of 1894, during the celebrations of her sixtieth birthday: whoever made her unhappy that day, she would make unhappy for the rest of his life.⁠[15]

In 1894, when a special metropolitan examination was held for the Empress Dowager Cixi’s sixtieth birthday, Zhang Jian took first place in the first class and became zhuangyuan with Weng’s strong backing.⁠[16]

Luo Yimin said in a lecture that Zhang Jian was Weng’s disciple, one of the “six disciples of the Weng school”, and that as war with Japan approached in 1894 Zhang supported his teacher’s call for war, advising him and rallying support for him.⁠[17]

In 1896 his tutorship of the Emperor was ended by order of the Empress Dowager, but as an official he still had access to the Emperor; in 1897 he became Associate Grand Secretary. Guo Xuming’s essay says that the seventh month of 1897 was the high point of his political career, when he was Associate Grand Secretary, acting president of the Board of Revenue and a member of the Grand Council. Hummel’s work also says that as his influence increased he was hated by members of the conservative party, mostly northerners, who recognized Empress Xiaoqin, the Empress Dowager Cixi, as their leader.⁠[1][1][7]

The photo story on chiculture.org.hk says that he supported Kang Youwei’s ideas on reform and presented seven of Kang’s memorials to the Guangxu Emperor, including the Memorial on Coping with the Overall Situation in Reply to an Imperial Proclamation, strengthening the Emperor’s resolve to pursue reform. The Changshu government website says that he approved of Kang’s reform and recommended Kang to the Guangxu Emperor. Scholars differ on who brought Kang to the Emperor: Luke S. K. Kwong holds that Zhang Yinhuan was more instrumental than Weng; Young-tsu Wong maintains that it was Weng who eventually recommended Kang, and writes that after the coup Weng publicly denied this crucial recommendation.⁠[18][2][12]

On the twenty-ninth day of the third month of 1898 the Grand Secretary Xu Tong memorialized asking that Zhang Zhidong be summoned to Beijing for consultation; on the third day of the intercalary third month an edict summoned Zhang to an audience, and Weng noted in his diary that the governor-general of Huguang had been ordered to the capital at Xu Tong’s request. Xie Junmei, in his biography of Weng, holds that Xu’s aim was to use Zhang to drive Weng out; Mao Haijian writes that there is no direct evidence for this view but that he agrees with it. Zhang set out and reached Shanghai on the twenty-fifth day of the intercalary third month, but because of the Shashi incident he was ordered on the twenty-fourth day of the fourth month to return to his post at once, and he never reached Beijing.⁠[19]

Mao Haijian further writes that the Guangxu Emperor often conferred privately with Weng on major affairs in the palace study, which aroused the Empress Dowager’s suspicion, and that early in 1896 she abolished the Chinese study, after which relations between Weng and the Empress Dowager were very delicate; Weng and Gangyi were also at odds. On the twenty-second day of the fourth month, the day before the Hundred Days’ Reform began, the Empress Dowager made a first round of appointments: Ronglu became a Grand Secretary in charge of the Board of Revenue, Gangyi became Associate Grand Secretary and president of the Board of War, and Chongli became president of the Board of Punishments; Mao regards this round as aimed almost entirely at Weng. In the second round, on the twenty-seventh day of the fourth month, Weng was dismissed. Mao also writes that a memorial by the supervising censor Gao Xiezeng, charging that the Board of Revenue’s pay rises for foreign customs staff harmed the dignity of the state, did not attack Weng openly, but that Weng saw its intent and wrote in his diary that it meant to censure him without saying so and named only Zhang Yinhuan.⁠[19]

Hummel’s work says that in 1898 he helped the Guangxu Emperor to decide on a reform policy; on June 11 the Emperor issued an edict ordering provincial officials to recommend capable men and endorsing reform; on June 14 he ordered Kang Youwei and Zhang Yuanji to prepare for an audience two days later, and other reformers such as Huang ZunxianHuang ZunxianHuang Zunxian (1848–1905) was a late-Qing poet, diplomat and reformer who served as counselor of the Chinese legation in Japan, consul-general in San Francisco, counselor of the legation in London and consul-general in Singapore. He wrote the Riben guozhi (Treatises on Japan) and the Riben zashishi (Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects from Japan), and his collected poems, which brought colloquial language and new subjects into Chinese verse, made him a leading figure of the revolution in poetry; in 1897–1898 he took part in the reforms in Hunan, and after the coup of 1898 he was dismissed and returned home.Open the full entry, Tan SitongTan SitongTan Sitong (1865–1898) was a Chinese thinker and reformer of the late Qing from Liuyang, Hunan, and the author of the Renxue (A Study of Benevolence). He took part in the reforms in Hunan in 1897–1898 and served as a secretary of the Grand Council during the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898; after the coup of that year he refused to flee and was arrested and executed, one of the “Six Gentlemen of 1898.”Open the full entry and Liang QichaoLiang QichaoLiang Qichao (1873–1929) was a thinker, politician, journalist and scholar of the late Qing and early Republic, a disciple of Kang Youwei and a participant in the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898. After the reform failed he spent 14 years in exile in Japan, where he ran the journals Qingyi Bao and Xinmin Congbao; returning in 1912, he helped to found the Progressive Party, served the Beijing government as minister of justice and minister of finance, and in 1915–1916 opposed Yuan Shikai’s attempt to make himself emperor. After leaving politics at the end of 1917 he devoted himself to writing and teaching, was a tutor at the Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Learning and director of the Beijing Library, and left the collected works known as the Yinbingshi heji.Open the full entry were also named as eligible for an audience; on June 15 an edict charged Weng with mismanagement of state affairs and with displaying temper in the presence of the throne, and on these vague charges he was ordered to retire and return to his native place. The Palace Museum entry says that he was dismissed and sent home by the Empress Dowager Cixi on the fourth day after the edict defining the national policy was issued; the photo story on chiculture.org.hk says that he was dismissed by the Empress’s faction headed by Cixi; the Changshu government website says that, as a mainstay of the Emperor’s party, he was resented by Cixi and was dismissed in 1898, the twenty-fourth year of the Guangxu reign, and ordered back to his native place; Ma Li’s article in Guangming Daily also says that Cixi dismissed him and sent him home for supporting the reform of 1898.⁠[1][3][18][6][2]

Luke S. K. Kwong and Young-tsu Wong both hold that it was the Guangxu Emperor, not Cixi, who dismissed him. Kwong points to his deteriorating relationship with the Emperor and to his rivalry with Zhang Yinhuan for the Emperor’s confidence; Wong regards Kang Youwei as the major factor in his sudden removal, holding that Weng’s reluctance and his criticism of Kang goaded the Emperor into fury, and that Zhang Yinhuan was not a key factor.⁠[12]

Guo Xuming’s essay says that on the day after the edict dismissing him, the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month, with the Dragon Boat Festival approaching, a eunuch brought the customary festival gift from the palace, a length of grass-linen gauze; Weng gave the eunuch a tip of two taels of silver and had him take back the Dragon Boat Festival reward due to him from the palace, and settled the sums he had drawn on the Imperial Academy and the Board of Revenue; through a money shop he sent 2,000 taels of silver to his nephew Yu Zhongluan in his home district, telling him to keep it safe because his food and clothing from then on would depend on it; fifteen days later he left Beijing in low spirits.⁠[7]

The edict defining the national policy was issued on the twenty-third day of the fourth month of the twenty-fourth year of the Guangxu reign; He Yan writes that Weng drafted this programmatic document. He was dismissed on the twenty-seventh day of that month.⁠[20][19]

Luo Yimin said that when Weng was dismissed and sent home, Zhang Jian urged him to go back south, invoking the story of Ning Wuzi, who knew when to play the fool and so could advance or withdraw at will.⁠[17]

Hummel’s work says that after the coup, on December 4, he was denounced for having recommended Kang Youwei to the throne, stripped of all his ranks and confined to his home under the surveillance of the local officials. The Changshu government website says that after the coup he was dismissed, barred from office for ever and placed under strict supervision by the local officials; the Palace Museum entry says that he was dismissed after the coup of 1898; Xie Junmei’s article says that the court dismissed him, barred him from office for ever and placed him under the control of the local officials.⁠[1][2][3][15]

He Yan’s article describes a secret letter signed by Weng and presumed to have been written to Liao Shouheng, a minister of the Zongli Yamen, which says that the Empress Dowager had even remarked that if Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao were not caught, Weng too would be held to blame.⁠[20]

The Changshu government website says that he lived in seclusion in the hut by the family tombs on Bage Peak, on the western slope of Mount Yu, and died of illness after seven years of hardship. Ma Li’s article says that after returning to Changshu he lived at the Pingyin Lodge on Mount Yu, calling himself the Old Man of Songchan and the Recluse of Pinglu, grieved over the Guangxu Emperor’s confinement on Yingtai, and died of illness after seven years of melancholy. Xie Junmei’s article says that he spent seven hard years in his home town of Changshu.⁠[2][6][15]

Luo Yimin said that Weng, then confined at home in Changshu, on hearing that Zhang Jian’s Dasheng mill had begun spinning yarn, gladly presented a couplet: the release of the mechanism moves heaven and earth, and the cloth it yields clothes all our southeast.⁠[17]

He died in his native place, Changshu, on July 3, 1904, the thirtieth year of the Guangxu reign, and was buried on Mount Yu.⁠[1][15][5]

Wang Jun’s review says that in 1904 Kang Youwei, then in exile in Sweden, wrote fourteen elegies on learning of his death, calling him in the preface the first teacher of China’s reform.⁠[10]

He Yan’s article quotes his last poem: the affairs of sixty years, grief until the coffin closes, yet he would not lightly shed his two streams of tears before the young.⁠[20]

In 1904 Kang Youwei, then in exile in Sweden, on learning of Weng’s death wrote fourteen elegies for him, saying in the preface that Weng was the first teacher of China’s reform and of the utmost importance.⁠[10]

In 1909, the first year of the Xuantong reign and the year after the Empress Dowager’s death, the gentry of Jiangsu succeeded in persuading the court, and an edict restored all his former offices and ranks and conferred the posthumous name Wengong.⁠[1][3][2]

The Huanqiu Renwu article says that the Weng family was known for having two imperial tutors, father and son, five jinshi degree-holders and three provincial governors. His grandfather Weng Xianfeng passed the provincial examination in 1783, the forty-eighth year of the Qianlong reign, and rose to be director of studies of Haizhou (now Lianyungang, Jiangsu). His father Weng Xincun, a jinshi, was early in his career chief tutor of the Imperial Study for princes, teaching the future Xianfeng Emperor, Prince Gong and others, served as president of the Boards of Works, Rites and Revenue, rose to be Grand Secretary of the Tiren Hall, was posthumously made Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent, and is regarded as the founder of the Weng family library. Ma Li’s article says that Weng Tonghe followed his father as tutor to emperors of two reigns, the Tongzhi and the Guangxu.⁠[8][6]

His eldest brother Weng Tongshu, a jinshi of 1846 (the twenty-sixth year of the Daoguang reign), served as compiler of the Hanlin Academy, education commissioner of Guizhou and governor of Anhui; he was 20 years older than Weng Tonghe and left him all his books at his death. The Huanqiu Renwu article says that of Weng Tongshu’s two sons, Weng Binsun became a jinshi and Weng Zengyuan took first place in the palace examination, which the family remembered as uncle and nephew both heading the examination lists and four generations in the Hanlin Academy; an article by Hai Yuzhong in Bolan Qunshu says that Weng Zengyuan, courtesy name Zhongyuan, was Weng Tonghe’s nephew. His second brother Weng Tongjue served as governor of Shaanxi and of Hubei, and part of his books also passed to Weng Tonghe.⁠[8][21]

Hai Yuzhong writes that his first wife, Tang Mengshu, was a granddaughter of Tang Jinzhao and a daughter of Tang Xiu; that Weng Xincun’s second daughter, Weng Xuanhua, also called Duan’en, was his second elder sister (Lu Beirong’s article writes Xuanhua with a different first character); and that while studying at the Youwen Academy he associated with calligraphers of the Changshu and Zhaowen area.⁠[21][4]

Li Lin’s article says that his diary shows that he often quarrelled with his concubine, née Lu, and once, after a disagreement, struck her with tea things so that blood streamed down her face; he wrote that while he had nothing to be ashamed of in his duties to family and society, in his private quarters he was often wilful and violent, which he found frightening. The article adds that his chronology records that his wife Tang died of illness, which recurred after quarrels caused by his hot temper and grew worse in the autumn, no medicine helping.⁠[9]

He had no children; Weng Zenghan, a son of his second brother Weng Tongjue, was adopted as his heir, and the family collection passed to him. A Weng family descendant interviewed by The Paper said that Weng Zenghan had two sons, the elder, Weng Ansun, who inherited the family collection, and Weng Chunsun; Weng Ansun, being childless, adopted Weng Zhilian from the line of Weng Tongshu; Weng Zhilian, having no son, in turn adopted Weng Xingqing, who later became Wan-go H. C. WengWan-go H. C. WengWan-go H. C. Weng (1918–2020) was a collector, filmmaker and art historian who lived in the United States, a descendant of the late-Qing statesman Weng Tonghe and heir to the Weng family collection. He made dozens of educational and documentary films on Chinese art and culture, served as president of the China Institute in America, transferred the Weng family library to the Shanghai Library and gave a large part of the family’s paintings and calligraphy to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and other institutions in the United States and China.Open the full entry. The Huanqiu Renwu article says that Weng Zhilian, Weng Tonghe’s great-grandson, lived in Tianjin and died in 1919, and that he adopted Wan-go H. C. Weng, the son of his younger brother. He Yan writes that Wan-go Weng’s birth father was Weng Zhixi, that he was adopted before he was six months old, and that the Caiyi Hall in Changshu, the family graves, the grave-side lodge and all the family’s cultural objects were placed in his name, to be looked after with the help of his adoptive mother, née Qiang, and his birth parents for the next thirty years.⁠[13][22][8][20]

Wan-go H. C. Weng, Weng Tonghe’s descendant in the fifth generation, was born in 1918 as Weng Xingqing, inherited the family collection at the age of two, went to the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry in 1938 to study at Purdue UniversityPurdue UniversityPurdue University is a public research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and Indiana’s land-grant university. Established and named by the Indiana legislature in 1869, it began classes in 1874. Today the Purdue system comprises main campuses in West Lafayette and Indianapolis, regional campuses and an online university.Open the full entry, known for engineering, and died at his home at 2 a.m. on December 9, 2020 (US Eastern Time), aged 102.⁠[22][8]

Hummel’s work says that he kept a diary from 1858 until a few days before his death, 46 years in all, and that it was published in facsimile around 1925, in 40 volumes, as Weng Wengong gong riji; the work says that Jin Liang compiled his important record Jinshi renwu zhi (printed 1934) from this and similar diaries. Wang Hongbo’s article in China Reading Weekly says that the diary, kept for nearly 50 years across three reigns, is counted among the four great diaries of the late Qing; Li Lin’s article says that it runs to several million characters.⁠[1][23][9]

Editions: in 1925 the Hanfenlou of the Commercial Press published a facsimile, Weng Wengong gong riji, in 40 thread-bound volumes. A 2015 report by The Paper says that the reproduction was directed by Zhang Yuanji, who consulted repeatedly with Weng Zhixi, a fourth-generation descendant who then held the diary, and that out of deference to their elders they chose to mask several places so that they were not printed; Xie Junmei’s article says that Zhang Yuanji and Weng Zhixi, protecting their teacher and their forebear, left out some content they thought inopportune, including some remarks on Li Hongzhang, Zuo ZongtangZuo ZongtangZuo Zongtang (1812–1885) was a statesman and military commander of the late Qing dynasty. Holding only the provincial degree, he joined the staff of the governor of Hunan, raised the Chu Army against the Taiping Rebellion and served as governor of Zhejiang and governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang, of Shaanxi and Gansu and of Liangjiang, rising to grand secretary and grand councillor; from 1875 he directed the campaign in Xinjiang that defeated Yakub Beg, after which Xinjiang was made a province.Open the full entry, Binchun and others, which led some to doubt the diary’s authenticity; Li Lin’s article says that Zhang Yuanji had been Weng Tonghe’s student and suppressed many passages of the manuscript in the reproduction, and that the Commercial Press in Taiwan issued a reduced reprint of it in 1973. A typeset edition with an index, edited by Zhao Zhongfu, was published in 1970–1979 by Chengwen Publishing in Taiwan in six hardbound volumes, the first to be punctuated, with an index of personal and place names in volume six (Xie Junmei’s article mentions a facsimile edition in Taiwan edited by Zhao Zhongfu and Shen Yunlong). A typeset edition collated by Chen Yijie was published by Zhonghua Book Company in 1989, with a second edition in 2006, in six paperback volumes without an index.⁠[24][15][9]

In December 2011 Zhongxi Book Company published an eight-volume edition edited by Wan-go H. C. Weng and proofread by Weng Yijun, priced at 680 yuan; it was the first to use the family’s original manuscript as its base text, and it added the Grand Council diaries of 1883–1884 and 1894–1895, early diaries of 1849 and 1850, his self-compiled chronology Songchan nianpu with a supplement by his great-grandnephew Weng Zhixi, and an appendix of photographs of the altered manuscript pages. The new edition runs to eight hardbound volumes and more than three million characters; it took two years to prepare, corrected nearly 10,000 misreadings and misprints in earlier editions, and was launched in Changshu.⁠[9][23]

The Huanqiu Renwu article says that in 2015 Wan-go H. C. Weng donated to the Shanghai Library a group of documents including the manuscript of the diary in 47 volumes; Xie Junmei’s article dates this free donation to November 2015 and says that the Shanghai Library sent officials and experts to the United States to receive it; a 2015 report by The Paper says that on December 17 Wan-go Weng, then 98, held a simple ceremony at his home in the eastern United States handing over the 47 manuscript volumes of the diary and the manuscript of the Wengshi wenxian congbian, which entered the Shanghai Library on the evening of December 19, with a ceremony at the library on December 21, 68 years after the manuscript had been taken out of China. The Huanqiu Renwu article adds that in 2016 a fifth-generation descendant of Weng Tongshu donated one more volume of Weng Tonghe’s early diary. Xie Junmei’s article says that in November 2016 Shanghai Far East Publishers issued a colour facsimile reproducing the manuscript as it is, with its original marks and corrections.⁠[8][15][24]

Xie Junmei’s article says that by an incomplete count more than 1,300 officials who dealt with him appear in the diary, and that the events it records include the examination scandal of 1858, the Second Opium War, the coup of 1861, the Sino-Japanese War, the Hundred Days’ Reform, the Boxer movement, the late-Qing New Policies and preparation for constitutional government, and the case of Yang Naiwu and Xiaobaicai; related records include his Grand Council diaries, notes on foreign affairs, notes from the examination halls, a diary of 1894, jottings, notes from the Board of Punishments, lists of officials of the Board of Revenue and records of the southern and northern archives of the Board. Wang Jun’s review says that nearly 10,000 names appear in the diary. Li Lin’s article says that each entry usually begins with the day’s weather, and that in spring phrases such as “yellow sand everywhere” and “yellow sand blotting out the sky” are frequent; the diary also records the creation of the Zhaoxin shares, which everyone from princes to commoners was allowed to take up.⁠[15][10][9]

On alterations to the diary: Hummel’s work says that some claim that the sections relating to his part in the reform movement were partly rewritten; Li Lin’s article says that after the reform failed and he was dismissed and sent home, he altered the entries on reform figures and events, sometimes cutting out whole pages and rewriting them; Xie Junmei’s article says that, fearing that the Empress Dowager might at any time send men to put him to death, he cut and revised his diary, especially the passages on his recommendation of Kang Youwei and on the reform; Young-tsu Wong writes that many historians find strong evidence that he tampered with his diary to conceal his interest in reform and his friendship with Kang. A 2015 report by The Paper, by contrast, says that Kong Xiangji, comparing the manuscript page by page, found only five places altered by Weng himself, with little effect on the value of the diary as a whole, so that claims in the scholarly literature that the diary disguised the truth and that its account of the 1898 reform is untrue are too sweeping, and its account of the reform is basically credible.⁠[1][9][15][12][24]

The Huanqiu Renwu article says that Weng Xincun bought rare books dispersed from Chen Kui’s Jirui Tower, others going to the Qu family’s Tieqin Tongjian Tower, wrote on his copy of the Dingmao ji that he was relieved it had not been sold, and later built a library for printed books and manuscripts; that Weng Tongshu, serving under Qishan at the Jiangbei camp at Yangzhou in the 1850s, found a copy of the Wuyue beishi in Hanjiang County and in 1858 sent more than a hundred books home to Beijing, among them books from Qin Enfu’s Shiyan Studio; and that after the coup at the start of the Tongzhi reign the household of the Prince Yi declined, its books reached the bookshops, and Weng Tonghe bought some of them. Zong He’s article says that he and Weng Tongshu enlarged the family library, and that by acquiring the best items of the Prince Yi collection when it was dispersed in the late Qing he raised the quality of the Weng library.⁠[8][11]

Ma Li’s article says that the Zhizhi Studio in the family house in Changshu is a two-storey library whose name comes from the Laozi, and that some of the Song and Yuan editions he bought in Liulichang were kept there.⁠[6]

The Huanqiu Renwu article says that Weng Zhilian moved some of the rare books to Tianjin because of its dry climate, the rest staying in Changshu; that in 1907 the Japanese sinologist Shimada Kan listed the Weng library among the nine great collections of the late Qing; that Wan-go H. C. Weng, who had gone to the United States to study in 1938, returned nine years later, shipped the Tianjin books to Shanghai on a coal ship and then to the United States on an ocean liner, after which for decades the books were believed lost; and that in 1985 they appeared in an exhibition of rare Chinese books at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, after which Fu Xinian examined them at Wan-go Weng’s home, Laixi Ju. Zong He’s article says that in the 1940s Wan-go Weng took a group of rare books, including the Changduan jing, to the United States, and that the Weng library has passed through six generations.⁠[8][11]

At the end of 1999 Wan-go H. C. Weng signed a contract for the transfer of the Weng library on condition that it be transferred whole, not divided, to a national public library, with a reserve price, and that all the rare books held in the United States, except Chen Hongshou’s playing-card designs Shuihu bogu yezi, which he kept for the time being, went back to China; on April 28, 2000, the Weng library arrived at the Shanghai Library, 80 titles in 542 volumes, comprising 11 Song, 4 Yuan, 12 Ming and 26 Qing printed editions and 27 manuscripts and drafts by noted scholars, bought for US$4.5 million paid by the Shanghai municipal government. Song printed editions among them, including the Jiyun, Shaozi guanwu neiwai pian, Changduan jing, Chongdiao zuben jianjie lu, Huichang yipin zhiji, Dingmao ji and Songshan jushi ji, are unique copies. In 2022 the Changduan jing was shown at the Shanghai Library East.⁠[22][8][11]

Wan-go H. C. Weng’s collection of painting and calligraphy came almost entirely from Weng Tonghe’s collection; it included a fine Tang manuscript of the Lingfei jing from the Kaiyuan era (the 43-line version, later transferred to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), a handscroll of family letters by Wen Zhengming, calligraphy by Dong Qichang and a handscroll of letters by Huang Daozhou, as well as many works in Weng Tonghe’s own hand and some forty of his personal seals, among them seals carved by Wu Changshuo, Jin Cheng and Wang Bingtie. A Weng family descendant interviewed by The Paper said that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago both hold items given by Wan-go Weng. In 2010 Wan-go Weng gave Wu Bin’s Ming painting of the Shaoyuan garden purification gathering to Peking University; in 2016 he sold the Southern Song painter Liang Kai’s portrait of the Daoist Lord to the Shanghai Museum at a concessionary price; in 2018 he gave Shen Zhou’s copy of Dai Jin’s Xie An at Dongshan and Wang Yuanqi’s hanging scroll illustrating Du Fu’s poems to the Shanghai Museum. Chen Ruoqian’s report of 2020 says that on July 28, 2018, his hundredth birthday, Wan-go Weng announced a gift of 183 objects to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the largest group of ancient Chinese objects the museum had ever received; her report of 2019 says that on his hundredth birthday he announced the gift of the Shen Zhou and Wang Yuanqi paintings to the Shanghai Museum. Both reports say that in July and December 2018 he gave the Boston museum, on two occasions, Wang Hui’s Ten Thousand Li of the Yangzi River and 183 works of painting, calligraphy and other objects from the family collection, gifts that drew wide attention and public controversy in cultural circles.⁠[22][13]

On December 13, 2018 (local time), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston announced that it had accepted this gift of painting, calligraphy and other objects collected by six generations of the Weng family: 183 items, comprising 130 paintings, 31 works of calligraphy, 18 rubbings and 4 textiles spanning thirteen centuries and five dynasties, among them seven works by Dong Qichang, eleven by Wang Hui and Shen Zhou’s sixteen-leaf album of famous sights of Suzhou, as well as calligraphy by Weng Tonghe himself and a set of drinking-game cards (Bogu pai) designed by Chen Hongshou, which Weng had especially treasured and for which he had written a title label, colophons and poems.⁠[25]

He Yan’s article says that Weng Tonghe’s diary for the twelfth day of the fourth month of the eleventh year of the Guangxu reign (1885) records that on returning home in the evening he saw Wu Bin’s painting of Mi Wanzhong’s Shaoyuan garden.⁠[20]

Hummel’s work says that he painted landscapes with some skill and was famous as a calligrapher, particularly in the regular (kai) script; his poems, Pinglu shigao, in eight chapters, were printed in 1919, and a one-chapter supplement, Pinglu shibu, with collation notes and lyric poems, appeared two years later, in 1921; a collection of his calligraphy, Weng Songchan xiangguo zhenji, was reproduced in twelve volumes in 1920, and his letters, Weng Songchan shouzha, compiled by a nephew, in ten volumes in 1908–1911. The Changshu government website says that he studied the classics and histories with a view to practical use, sought out talent and promoted younger men; that he was accomplished in poetry, prose and lyric verse, best of all in poetry, in an elegant, vigorous and limpid style indebted to Su Shi and Huang Tingjian; and that his calligraphy was bold and unrestrained, its force seeming to pierce the paper, so that contemporaries saw in it the strength of Yan Zhenqing; it lists his Pinglu shigao and Weng Wengong gong riji, the Pinglu shichao, Pinglu ci and Pinglu wen compiled by Weng Yongsun, the Pinglu shi buyi compiled by Zhang Lansi, and the calligraphy collection Weng Songchan yimo zhenji, and a modern compilation, Weng Tonghe shici ji; the Palace Museum entry lists his works as Pinglu shiwen gao and Weng Wengong gong riji.⁠[1][2][3]

The Huanqiu Renwu article calls him the foremost calligrapher of the Tongzhi and Guangxu eras; Lin Shao’s article says that his calligraphy was ranked first since the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras. The photo story on chiculture.org.hk describes him as a late-Qing scholar renowned for his calligraphy and painting and shows four samples of his semi-cursive script. Li Lin’s article says that he was at once a calligrapher, man of letters, collector and connoisseur, and that he was well versed in Chinese medicine.⁠[8][5][18][9]

Ma Li’s article in Guangming Daily says that a zhuangyuan memorial arch stands at the entrance to the lane of the Weng family house in Changshu, a traditional official-gentry residence of seven courtyards; on the central axis are the sedan hall, the Caiyi Hall, the rear hall building and the Shuanggui Pavilion, on the west the middle hall, the Siyong Hall, the library building and the Bogu Pavilion, and on the east the Yulan Pavilion and the Zhizhi Studio; the author calls it plain and compact. The Caiyi Hall, a main hall about 500 years old, was a Ming house that changed owners several times before Weng Xincun bought it to care for his mother, and the family used it to receive guests and for weddings and birthday banquets; the rear courtyard houses the Changshu Zhuangyuan History Exhibition.⁠[6]

In 1990 Wan-go H. C. Weng gave the Weng ancestral house in Changshu to the city, and it has been made into the Weng Tonghe Memorial Hall. Weng Tonghe’s grave is surrounded by a grove at the foot of the mountain, with a fibreglass statue of him to the west of the tomb and a group of sculptures that outlines his life.⁠[22][13][6]

Guo Xuming’s essay, drawing on his diary, describes his dealings in gifts: on the sixth day of the second month of 1864 Wang Rongji, transferred from financial commissioner of Zhili to the same post in Shanxi, gave him a farewell gift of 30 taels on leaving Beijing, and he gave in return food for the journey and Beijing boots; at the end of that year his fellow townsman Miao Elian, a county magistrate in Henan, sent 30 taels as a winter gift, and he gave in return a purse, a rank badge, hat brims and boots, but six years later he declined 100 taels from Miao brought by Miao’s nephew, who had come to Beijing for the examinations; in 1865 He Shu’en gave him a farewell gift of 20 taels, and around the Mid-Autumn Festival of 1870 He sent 40 taels as a festival gift, which Weng returned for fear that He wanted a favour.⁠[7]

The essay further says that in 1881 his disciple Zhang Pengzhu, who had been impeached and removed from office and had come to Beijing to lobby, brought him a gift of 100 taels and two bolts of grass cloth, which he did not accept; in early summer of that year Liu Ao called and offered the customary farewell gift, which he declined as they hardly knew each other; two years later Liu Ao sent his son Liu Hong, a licentiate, to call on him, and when Liu Hong produced a packet of silver as a gift Weng rebuked him sternly, calling it absurd; a year later, at the Mid-Autumn Festival, Liu Ao sent 40 taels as a festival gift, which he again refused, and when Liu Ao had Liu Hong bring gifts once more he kept only three pieces of Taiwan cloth, twenty incense sticks and a piece of poria. He firmly declined 200 taels that Li Fengbao produced on taking his leave; after accepting repeated gifts of silver from Ma Xinyi he wrote that he felt ashamed; Ma Yukun gave him 400 taels at their first meeting; Changgeng, the military governor of Ili, sent him a horse, a jade snuff bottle, a plume holder, a tiger skeleton, a case of candles, a copper basin, two candlesticks, eight lynx and an otter, all of which he accepted as a gesture from ten thousand li away that he could not refuse, giving two sets of robe material in return. On the twentieth day of the seventh month of 1897 he wrote in his diary that he had refused the farewell gifts of Lü Haihuan and Chen Yunyi, that the gifts he declined were too many to count, and that he noted these only by chance.⁠[7]

The essay says that Natong sent festival gifts at every Dragon Boat and Mid-Autumn Festival, which his diary barely records, and that both before his dismissal and during his years at home Natong twice sent him a thousand taels in silver, both of which he refused.⁠[7]

Wei Xin’s article in People’s Digest retells this well-known story, which exists in many versions: in one, the Guangxu Emperor asked Weng what he ate in the morning, he answered three eggs every morning, and the Emperor said that such a breakfast must cost nine taels of silver; in the version in the Nanting biji, the palace accounts priced each egg at eight and a half taels, the Emperor asked whether Weng had ever eaten anything so costly, and Weng, knowing that someone was cheating and that he could not offend them, said that his family used eggs only occasionally for great sacrifices and would never dare to eat them otherwise, and those who heard him admired his tact. Working through the figures, Wei Xin writes that eggs that costly would have been beyond even an emperor and that eunuchs padding the accounts of the Imperial Household would hardly have made so much of eggs, but that stories of costly palace eggs are not entirely without basis.⁠[26]

Ma Li’s article also recounts an anecdote from the Qing writer Li Boyuan’s Nanting biji about words of Weng’s that offended the Empress Dowager Cixi: he dared to rebut a reproach from Prince Gong and had the prince answer Cixi’s questioning with what he had said.⁠[6]

Luke S. K. Kwong holds that he owed his brilliant career at court to the Empress Dowager Cixi’s repeated favours and should be seen as a mediating force between the Guangxu Emperor and his imperial aunt; Young-tsu Wong accepts the description of a mediating force but argues that it enhanced rather than diminished his role, and writes that between 1886 and 1898 he enjoyed a rare, intimate personal relationship with the Emperor. Ping-ti Ho’s article of 1951 argues that, although he had earlier endorsed Kang Youwei and his programme, in the spring of 1898 he was in reality an opponent of systematic innovation.⁠[12][27]

Wang Jun’s review of Xie Junmei’s Weng Tonghe’s Personal Relations and Late-Qing Politics (Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, June 2018, nearly 800,000 characters) says that he came of a prominent family, took first place in the examinations young and taught emperors of two reigns, so that it was said that the Son of Heaven’s disciple had become the teacher of the Son of Heaven; his power was such that when Timothy Richard met Li Hongzhang, Li spoke of him with some disapproval as the real power at the Qing court. After 1898 Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao made his dismissal one of three banners of the tragedy of the reform, together with the Guangxu Emperor’s secret edict and the execution of the six martyrs of 1898, portraying him as a loyal figure set against Cixi, Ronglu, Yuan ShikaiYuan ShikaiYuan Shikai (1859–1916) was a Chinese army leader and reformist minister of the late Qing dynasty and the first president of the Republic of China, from 1912 to 1916. The modern army he trained at Xiaozhan, Tianjin, grew into the Beiyang Army; in 1915–1916 he proclaimed a monarchy with himself as emperor, cancelled it in March 1916 and died on June 6 of that year.Open the full entry and Li Lianying.⁠[10]

Wang Jun’s review further says that later archives and memoirs show another side of him: a politician’s scheming, a courtier’s obsequiousness and the stubborn short-sightedness common among scholar-officials of his time; that his disciple Zhang Yuanji and others could not agree with his statements, which showed ignorance of Western methods and of the times and world affairs; that Jin Liang and Kung-chuan Hsiao held that he was not inclined to Western learning, led the reform mainly to control the Guangxu Emperor, pushed out Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong, and offended Prince Gong and Cixi; and that modern films and television cast Li Hongzhang as a hero and Weng as a sluggish hypocrite and schemer who held back military funds, sought fame and power by advocating war while harming the country with empty talk, and used the name of reform to build a faction. The review argues that both the image of the sage and that of the villain were shaped by larger narratives of reform and modernisation and both miss the real man, and it quotes the view that Kang, Liang and their allies explained the conflict between mother and son as one between new and old, while the Empress Dowager explained the conflict between new and old as one between mother and son. Lin Shao’s article calls him the leader of the later Qingliu, the “pure current” of remonstrating officials in the late Qing.⁠[10][5]

A couplet current among late-Qing scholar-officials, “the chief minister from Hefei grows fat while the realm grows lean; the minister of revenue from Changshu thrives while the world goes hungry”, mocked the wealth of Li Hongzhang, a man of Hefei, and Weng Tonghe, a man of Changshu.⁠[28]

Luo Yimin regards Weng and Zhang Jian as steady, cautious reformists who supported the basic ideas of reformers such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao but disapproved of their rash haste.⁠[17]