Yuan Jingxue

An article by Li Xianzhe in Tuanjie Bao, excerpted by Wenzhai Bao in 2010, calls her Yuan Shikai’s favorite daughter and quotes her recollection that the counterfeit Shuntian Shibao her father read had been produced by her eldest brother, Yuan Keding, together with a group of associates, and that the counterfeit edition went not only to her father but to the rest of the household as well.⁠[1]

She recalled that one day, when her maid went home to see her own father, she asked the maid to bring back some spiced crisp broad beans; the next day the maid returned with a large packet wrapped in a whole sheet of Shuntian Shibao. While eating the beans she happened to read this issue from a few days before and, finding its tone different from that of the paper the household usually saw, was very puzzled and went to ask her second brother, Yuan KewenYuan KewenYuan Kewen (1890–1931), art name Hanyun, was the second son of Yuan Shikai, known as a poet, calligrapher and collector of Song and Yuan printed books, old coins and stamps, and as an amateur performer of Peking opera and Kunqu. He remonstrated in verse when his father prepared to take the throne; the physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan was his son.Open the full entry, who said that he had long since seen copies outside that differed from those in the residence but had not dared to tell their father.⁠[1]

That evening, she recalled, she gave the paper to her father and, when he asked where it had come from, explained truthfully; early the next morning Yuan Shikai summoned Yuan Keding and, on establishing that he was behind it, was so enraged that he gave him a severe beating with a leather whip, cursing him all the while for deceiving his father and misleading the country.⁠[1]

Nicholas L. Chan’s 2019 paper states that the story of Yuan Keding’s counterfeiting of Shuntian Shibao first appears in her own account. Zhang Boju also relates the affair in a note to his poems: the counterfeit copies printed by Yuan Keding all spoke of how much Japan favored the monarchy, and when the Hongxian monarchy was faltering and Yuan Shikai was much displeased, a sister of Yuan Kewen one day brought in peanuts wrapped in a genuine copy of the paper.⁠[2]

A 2016 article by Xu Xiao, a reporter for The Paper, has Yuan Kewen and his younger sister Yuan Shuzhen exposing Yuan Keding’s forgery of the newspaper together; an article by Sa Su in Huanqiu Renwu in 2013 says that the forgery was discovered by chance by Yuan Kewen and Yuan Shikai’s daughter Yuan Shuzhen.⁠[3][4]

Chan’s paper states that she wrote My Father Yuan Shikai in the 1960s; the paper cites the memoir from volume 25 of the 2011 bound reprint of Wenshi ziliao xuanji (Selected Historical Materials), covering issues 72 to 74, compiled by a committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.⁠[2]

In the memoir she says of her father’s poems that they were indeed not very good. Chan considers that she wrote this under the constraints of the political climate of the time, and judges that Zhang Boju, living in the same period and speaking with the standing of a veteran of the old literary world, assessed Yuan Shikai’s literary talent far more evenhandedly than she did.⁠[2]

She writes in the memoir that her father was fond of taking medicines: of Chinese medicines he took tonics such as ginseng and deer antler, often chewing them by the handful, and of Western medicines only digestive aids such as soda tablets; the household also employed two wet nurses, and every day he drank the milk they expressed. In her view, by the principles of Chinese medicine ginseng, deer antler and human milk are all heating tonics, and taking them month after month and year after year was bound in time to affect his health. The 25th poem of Zhang Boju’s Xu Hongxian jishi shi buzhu has Yuan Shikai visiting the eight palace chambers night after night and relying on deer antler as a tonic; Chan suggests that Zhang Boju may have been influenced by her account when he wrote it.⁠[2]

The memoir preserves a couplet by Yuan Kewen that laments the wind and rain of high places and warns against climbing to the topmost storey of the jade tower; Chan writes that Yuan Keding’s younger brothers mostly disapproved of the monarchy scheme and that the couplet was plainly meant as an indirect remonstrance with their father.⁠[2]

Wang Birong’s book on the family history of the descendants of Yuan Shikai’s fifth consort, Lady Yang, an excerpt of which China News Service published in 2013, quotes a passage of My Father Yuan Shikai in which she writes that her father sometimes plainly arranged his children’s marriages with his own political interests in mind; that many of his so-called intimate friends were likewise high officials, and that their marrying their children to one another was, it could not be denied, meant to help and advance one another politically; and that in betrothing his ninth son, Yuan KejiuYuan KejiuYuan Kejiu was the ninth son of Yuan Shikai; Phillips Academy’s record gives his year of birth as 1905 and Wang Birong’s book as 1903. Wang Birong writes that in 1914 his father betrothed him to Li Shaofang, the second daughter of Li Yuanhong, and that they married in 1934. He went to the United States to study in 1920 and attended Phillips Academy from 1921 to 1924; Bai Junhe, the husband of one of his nieces, says that after returning to China he served continuously as a director of Qixin Yanghui Gongsi (the Qixin cement company).Open the full entry, to a daughter of Li YuanhongLi YuanhongLi Yuanhong (1864–1928) was a naval engineer officer and a commander of the Hubei New Army in the late Qing who became military governor of the Hubei Military Government after the Wuchang Uprising of 1911, served as vice president in the early Republic and was twice President of the Republic of China, in 1916–1917 and 1922–1923; in his last years he lived in Tianjin and invested in industry, and he died there in 1928 and was buried at Wuchang in 1935.Open the full entry he undoubtedly had political aims, given the relations between the two men. The same excerpt also quotes the account of the 1914 betrothal given by Li Yuanhong’s eldest daughter, Li ShaofenLi ShaofenLi Shaofen was the eldest daughter of Li Yuanhong and his wife, Wu Jingjun. She studied in the United States and earned a master’s degree in education at Columbia University. She wrote A Brief Account of Li Yuanhong, a memoir of her father published in 1980 in No. 11 of Tianjin wenshi ziliao xuanji (Selected Historical Materials of Tianjin), which recounts how Yuan Shikai and her father arranged a betrothal between their families in 1914.Open the full entry, in A Brief Account of Li Yuanhong.⁠[5]

Yuan Shikai formally took one wife and nine concubines into his household and had 17 sons and 15 daughters; Chan’s paper gives the same numbers, adding that he never spared expense on his children’s education and that while he lived the whole family resided in Zhongnanhai.⁠[6][2]

Yuan Jiati, the daughter of Yuan Shikai’s fourth son, Yuan KeduanYuan KeduanYuan Keduan (died 1951) was the fourth son of Yuan Shikai; a skilled calligrapher, he was a counselor in the Dayuanshuai Fu (generalissimo’s headquarters) of Zhang Zuolin and a nominal director of the Kailuan Kuangwuju (Kailuan mining administration).Open the full entry, recalled in 2008 that her grandfather was very strict with his sons but rather indulgent toward his daughters; he set great store by daughters, and while the boys of the family all had childhood pet names, he allowed none to be given to the girls, regarding daughters as belonging to other families and as his means of forming alliances by marriage. She said that the Yuan children’s marriages were all arranged, nearly all of them with descendants of Qing princes and warlords: Cao Kun’s son, for example, was the husband of her fourteenth aunt, and a daughter of Li Yuanhong was the wife of her ninth uncle, all matches brought about by her grandfather.⁠[6]

The 2008 Huanqiu Renwu article that carries Yuan Jiati’s recollections also states that after Yuan Shikai’s death his cash was divided into 17 shares, one for each son, each worth 120,000 silver dollars, and that each of his 15 daughters received 8,000 silver dollars for her dowry.⁠[6]