Yuan Keding

Yuan Keding was the eldest son of Yuan Shikai and the only son born to his principal wife; his courtesy name was Yuntai and his childhood name Jiguang, which Yuan Shikai explained as meaning that he would carry on the glory of his forebears. An article signed Lao Jin in the newspaper Zhonghua Dushu Bao in 2013 states instead that, because of a birthmark on his face as a child, his milk name was Ji’er, and that when he started school his teacher, playing on the sound, gave him the school name Jiguang, meaning to carry on the glory of his ancestors; he was known as the Beijing Daye, the Eldest Master of Beijing.⁠[1][2][3]

He was 20 years older than his fifth brother, Yuan KequanYuan KequanYuan Kequan (1898–1941) was the fifth son of Yuan Shikai and a poet in the classical style; after his father’s death he lived in seclusion in Tianjin, and he left six collections of verse.Open the full entry, who was born in 1898. An article by Li Xianzhe in the newspaper Tuanjie Bao, excerpted in Wenzhai Bao, gives his age as 36 in 1914; Lao Jin’s article says that he lived to 81, the first man of the Yuan family to break the saying that its men did not live past 60.⁠[2][2][4][3]

Yuan Shikai had one wife and nine concubines, and 17 sons and 15 daughters in all; the second son was 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. Lao Jin’s article states that his mother was Yuan Shikai’s principal wife, Lady Yu of Chenzhou, and that at the age of four he went with his father to Korea and was brought up by Lady Shen, the first concubine.⁠[1][2][3]

The historian Su Quanyou, writing in Beijing Daily, states that Yuan Shikai took pains over his training: he had a deep grounding in classical learning and good German and English, often interpreted when his father dealt with foreigners, and kept a study piled with German and English books. Su Quanyou adds that he was a man of ambition. Li Xianzhe’s article states that while Yuan Shikai held office under the Qing, Yuan Keding also served in the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce.⁠[1][4]

A paper by Nicholas L. Chan in the Journal of Chinese Studies describes him as widely learned, proficient in German, English and Latin, and skilled in calligraphy and painting.⁠[2]

Zhang Chuancai, daughter of Zhang Boju, says in an oral account published in the magazine Sanlian Shenghuo Zhoukan that he studied in Germany as a young man and so knew German and English. She adds that most of the books he read were German and that he sometimes translated articles; that, perhaps because he had followed his father from post to post in his early years, his accent was mixed, so that one could not tell whether it was of Henan, Tianjin or Beijing; and that he was nine years older than her father. She also says that he was the son of Yuan Shikai’s principal wife, Lady Yu, the daughter of a wealthy man in Yuan Shikai’s home district in Henan, who could not read, knew little of the old etiquette, was not much in Yuan Shikai’s favor and bore him only this one son. Lao Jin’s article likewise says that he went to Germany to study, knew English and German and was regarded at the time as a talented young man.⁠[5][3]

Kang Youwei’s chronicle records that he sent his student Xu Yufu to Xiaozhan, where Yuan Shikai was training the New Army, to win Yuan Shikai over, and that the two talked happily. A January 2016 article in the magazine Huanqiu Renwu quotes Xu Shichang’s diary, which records that one morning he returned to Xiaozhan, went to see Yuan Shikai and talked with him at length, and that Xu Yufu came with him and stayed the night in the camp; a later entry records that Yuan Keding came and saw Xu Yufu, and the next day Xu Yufu hurried back to the capital. The article infers that Xu Yufu must have received some important message from Yuan Shikai’s side; Xu Dingmao, a fifth-generation descendant of Xu Shichang, infers from the wording of the diary that Xu Yufu may not have met Yuan Shikai in person.⁠[6]

An article by Zhu Wenliang in the journal Lishi Jiaoxue states that on the morning after his dismissal Yuan Shikai hurriedly fled to Tianjin with his son Yuan Keding; the article cites Yuan Shikai’s confidant Zhao Bingjun, then junior vice-minister of civil affairs, as saying that after the edict dismissing him was issued, several secret memorials of recent years by Liang Dingfen and others impeaching Yuan Shikai, concerning the scheme he had used against the Guangxu Emperor at the time of the coup of 1898, were found in the Empress Dowager Cixi’s document box; hearing that his punishment would be made heavier, Yuan Shikai felt himself in danger and fled at once. An article by Li Honggu in Sanlian Shenghuo Zhoukan states that on learning of the edict dismissing his father, Yuan Keding judged that his father would be killed as Erzhu Rong had been; Yuan Shikai chose to go to Tianjin and put up at the Lishunde Hotel in the British concession so that, should things take a further turn, he could flee from there to Japan. Between 1909 and 1911, while Yuan Shikai lived in retirement at Huanshang Village, he took part in exchanges of poems; the poems, 25 in all under 19 titles, are preserved mainly in Guitang changheshi, compiled by Yuan Kewen, and Huancun yixing, compiled by Yuan Keding.⁠[7][8][9]

Zhu Wenliang’s article states that in 1911, when Yikuang sent Ruan Zhongshu to Zhangde with a letter in his own hand urging Yuan Shikai to return to office, Yuan Keding and others opposed it and pressed Yuan Shikai not to come out of retirement.⁠[7]

Zhang Chuancai’s account says that in 1913 Yuan Keding injured his leg in a fall while riding and was left disabled for life; a note in Zhang Boju’s Xu Hongxian jishi shi buzhu, his annotated poems on the Hongxian period, records only that he had long before hurt his foot in a fall from a horse at Zhangde. Li Xianzhe’s article states that early in 1912 he was hurt in a riding accident at the family home in Henan and, not treated in time, was left with a lasting injury, and that the following year Yuan Shikai sent him to Germany for further treatment; the German emperor Wilhelm II, then seeking to extend German influence in the Far East, urged on him that a republic did not suit China’s conditions, that China must learn from Germany and could not prosper without a monarchy, and that if China restored the monarchy Germany would do its utmost to help; during his stay he was amazed at Germany’s achievements and became convinced of the efficacy of monarchy, and he returned to China in 1914. Lao Jin’s article, drawing on Xin bing mi yuan by Yuan Kewen, says that he was lamed by a fall from a horse: shortly after Yuan Shikai became president, when the area around Zhangde was unsettled and the family living at Huanshang Village went in daily fear, on the day of departure he was in high spirits, seeing the others off in the mule cart used for the journey and riding Yuan Kewen’s horse on the way back, and Yuan Kewen and the others had only just reached Tianjin when a telegram came from Zhangde saying that he had fallen from his horse and was badly hurt; it later emerged that he had been ill that day, sweating heavily in the second month and flushed in the face, and had fainted before falling, so that injury and illness together left him in a very grave state; his leg was eventually healed, but he was lame from then on.⁠[5][2][4][3]

In 1914 Yuan Shikai set up the Army Model Regiment; after holding the command himself for a time, he handed it to Yuan Keding. The list of figures in an article in The Paper states that, persuaded by Yuan Keding, Yuan Shikai replaced Duan Qirui with Wang Shizhen, and Duan Qirui came close to breaking with Yuan Shikai.⁠[2][10]

An article by Jeremiah Jenne in ChinaFile states that the American scholar Frank Johnson Goodnow, legal adviser to Yuan Shikai in 1913–1914, had for two years in Beijing been embedded in a pro-monarchy circle that included Yuan Keding, who “harbored imperial dreams of his own.”⁠[11]

When Yang Du and others founded the Chouanhui, a society that campaigned for a constitutional monarchy, Yuan Keding became one of its core members. An article by Chen Lumin in Zhonghua Dushu Bao states that he and Yang Du, among others, launched the Chouanhui.⁠[2][12]

He was in charge of receiving Goodnow during the latter’s visit to China in July 1915.⁠[1]

He summoned Liang Shiyi, leader of the Communications Clique, and asked him point-blank whether he would help change the form of state to a monarchy; Liang Shiyi later pledged his full support and offered funds and a plan. Su Quanyou’s article states that before this, in order to change Liang Shiyi’s attitude, Yuan Shikai and he had resolved to strike at the Communications Clique.⁠[1]

Su Quanyou’s article holds that he backed his father’s enthronement because it would make him crown prince; an article in The Paper states that he urged his father to take the throne in order to break the fate by which no member of the Yuan family lived past 60. Lao Jin’s article likewise says that he did all he could to egg his father on to the throne, his aim being to become crown prince.⁠[1][10][3]

An article by Yu Ge on the Yangtse Evening Post website states that Yuan Keding was the person keenest on Yuan Shikai’s enthronement, the hardest-working for it and the one who stood to gain most, and that he was busy at every key stage of the movement, such as the founding of the Chouanhui and the organizing of the national federation of petitioners.⁠[13]

Most of his younger brothers disapproved of the enthronement, and Yuan Kewen wrote a poem of remonstrance.⁠[2]

The article in The Paper states that Yuan Shikai accepted the imperial title on December 12, 1915, that it was Yuan Keding who fixed the following day, the 13th, for the officials’ ceremony of congratulation, and that the ceremony was held that morning at Zhongnanhai.⁠[10]

The same article states that Feng Guozhang detested him and called him a Cao Pi; he came to be called the “crown prince of Hongxian.”⁠[10][14]

Su Quanyou’s article states that the Shuntian Shibao, a newspaper run by Japanese in Beijing, was an important source of news for Yuan Shikai and often carried items unfavorable to the monarchy; that Yuan Keding paid to have a counterfeit edition made up, which regularly carried articles promoting the monarchy; and that Yuan Shikai, having read it, concluded that there would be no difficulty on the Japanese side and quickened his steps toward the throne. The article in The Paper states that he forged the Japanese-controlled Shuntian Shibao to make Yuan Shikai believe that Japan really supported his enthronement; Lao Jin’s article states that he secretly gathered a team of writers to produce a counterfeit Shuntian Shibao every day for Yuan Shikai; Yu Ge judges this the most outrageous of his acts in the monarchical movement, a fabrication of public opinion that misled his father.⁠[1][10][3][13]

Zhang Boju relates in Xu Hongxian jishi shi buzhu how the deception came to light: a sister of Yuan Kewen brought in some peanuts wrapped in a sheet of the genuine Shuntian Shibao, and on seeing it Yuan Shikai realized that the copies he had been reading were all forgeries printed by Yuan Keding; furious, he ordered Yuan Keding to be beaten.⁠[2]

Accounts differ on who exposed the matter and on what followed: Su Quanyou’s article says only that word of it later reached Yuan Shikai, who took a whip to Yuan Keding and cursed him for deceiving his father and ruining the country; the article in The Paper has Yuan Kewen and his sister Yuan Shuzhen exposing the forgery together and Yuan Shikai whipping him; Zhang Boju’s note says that no one dared really strike the heir apparent, so the beating was only a show. Li Xianzhe’s article quotes the recollection of Yuan Jingxue, Yuan Shikai’s third daughter: her maid brought home a large packet of spiced fried broad beans wrapped in a whole sheet of the Shuntian Shibao; noticing that its tone differed from the copies the household usually saw, she asked her second brother, Yuan Kewen, who said that he had already seen a different version outside but had not dared to tell their father; that night she gave the paper to her father, and early the next morning Yuan Shikai sent for Yuan Keding, established that the trick was his, and gave him a severe whipping, cursing him all the while for deceiving his father and ruining the country; she adds that the counterfeit copies were given not only to their father but to the rest of the household as well. Su Quanyou’s article states that before Yuan Shikai took up the whip he had hastily knelt and begged for mercy.⁠[1][10][2][4]

Yuan Shikai died of uremia on June 6, 1916.⁠[1][13]

Yu Ge’s article relates that when Yuan Shikai’s illness was at its worst Yuan Kewen reproached Yuan Keding, saying that it was entirely his doing that their father had come to this.⁠[13]

His seventh brother, Yuan KeqiYuan KeqiYuan Keqi was the seventh son of Yuan Shikai. In 1913 he and two of his elder brothers accompanied Yan Xiu on a journey to Europe and then attended Cheltenham College in England; he married the fifth daughter of Sun Baoqi, a foreign minister of the Republic of China, and left a recollection of his father’s last day.Open the full entry, recalled that on the day of his death their father called Yuan Keding into the inner room, and those in the outer room heard him say that he had been wrong in this affair and that Yuan Keding must not be taken in by those few men again; about half an hour later Yuan Shikai died.⁠[13]

On his deathbed Yuan Shikai said that someone had ruined him. Su Quanyou’s article states that the Yuan family judged the person meant to be most probably Yuan Keding; Yu Ge argues that, on Yuan Keqi’s recollection, Yuan Keding should be seen as a victim and the remark did not concern him. Yu Ge adds that out of a father’s tenderness Yuan Shikai did not hold his eldest son to blame. Yu Ge also writes that at his father’s death Yuan Keding wept over the coffin, and that he told Wang Xitong that his unfilial guilt reached up to heaven and had brought disaster on his old father.⁠[1][13]

After his father’s death he struck his head against the coffin and wept aloud; when Wang Xitong came to offer condolences, he said that his unfilial guilt had brought calamity upon his aged father.⁠[1][13]

He at first wished to call his father’s burial ground Yuan Ling, using the term for an imperial mausoleum; Xu Shichang objected and proposed Yuan Gong Lin, shortened to Yuan Lin.⁠[2]

Chan’s paper states that the Yuan family all held him responsible for dragging their father down and bringing about his sudden death, and that most of them had little to do with him afterward. A 2016 article in the magazine Huanqiu Renwu likewise states that because he had pushed so fanatically for his father’s enthronement, most of the Yuan descendants in Tianjin were unwilling to have anything to do with him. The list of figures in the article in The Paper states that after Yuan Shikai’s death, on a secret report that Duan Qirui would send troops to kill the whole Yuan family, the bereaved family was thrown into alarm several times in one night.⁠[2][15][10]

His nephew Yuan Jiabin recalled that after Yuan Shikai’s death Yuan Keding, then in Tianjin, several times wrote in his own hand to Chen Guangyuan, Yang Yide, Yan Dunyuan, Cai Shutang and others asking for loans of tens of thousands of yuan, as a deliberate test of whether his father’s old Beiyang colleagues still honored the old ties; when the full sum was sent he returned it soon afterward, sometimes sending back the original draft untouched. Zhang Chuancai’s account says that while president Yuan Shikai had acquired several properties for the family in Beijing and Tianjin; after his death in 1916 the family moved to Tianjin, the widows living on Diwei Road in the Hebei district of Tianjin and Yuan Keding in a house he had bought himself in the German concession, and in 1935 he moved to Beijing, to what she calls his old residence. She also says that after Yuan Shikai’s death each of the children received a large share of the estate and that Yuan Keding, as the eldest son, presided over the division.⁠[2][5]

After Yuan Shikai’s death Yuan Kequan sent him poems on four occasions, one of them addressed to his eldest brother at Huanshang at the New Year, expressing envy of his life in seclusion. Chan’s paper states that while their father lived Yuan Kequan was still a boy and Yuan Keding, past thirty, was busy all day in the pursuit of power, so that the brothers spent little time together; of the poems sent on the four occasions, a birthday poem in ten rhymes for his eldest brother is ornate and its closing couplet conveys the sorrow of growing old without achievement, a poem in ten rhymes sent to Yuntai and the two New Year poems express envy of his retirement in their home district, and a poem on current events presented to Yuntai explains that fighting prevented Yuan Kequan from returning home to follow him; the paper holds that Yuan Kequan still held that the eldest brother stands in the place of the father and was trying through these poems to mend the rift in the family.⁠[2]

In 1920 his son, Yuan Jiarong, left to study in 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 together with Yuan Kequan’s ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth brothers, 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, Yuan KejianYuan KejianYuan Kejian was the tenth son of Yuan Shikai. He went to the United States to study in 1920; his second son, Yuan Jiacheng, says that he studied at Harvard University and, after returning to China, worked only briefly as an English-language secretary and thereafter lived on the family property. His wife, Lu Yuxiu, was a daughter of Lu Jianzhang, a former military governor of Shaanxi.Open the full entry, Yuan Ke’anYuan Ke’anYuan Ke’an was the eleventh son of Yuan Shikai; he went to the United States to study in 1920 and attended Phillips Academy from 1921 to 1924, whose student record gives his year of birth as 1906 and lists a later career in civil aviation in Taiwan and service as secretary to Claire Lee Chennault.Open the full entry and Yuan KeduYuan KeduYuan Kedu was the twelfth son of Yuan Shikai, born in 1907. In 1920 he went to the United States to study together with several of his elder brothers and a nephew; he attended Williston Junior and then Phillips Academy, which he left in 1925 without completing the course.Open the full entry, and Yuan Kequan wrote a poem of farewell at Wusong.⁠[2]

Zhang Boju records that in his later years Yuan Keding lived in hardship in rented quarters at the Summer Palace in Beijing; in 1938 Zhang Boju also rented a house there, and the two often saw each other.⁠[2]

Zhang Boju saw that his meals included no fish, meat or vegetable dishes, only sliced steamed corn bread with pickles, yet he still sat upright at table with a napkin on his chest.⁠[2]

Zhang Chuancai’s account says that he lived in a courtyard inside the Summer Palace with his family, a private doctor and a cook; the book Wangshi bing bu ru yan records remarks by Zhang Boju on Yuan Keding’s later years, in which he says that Yuan Keding’s circumstances went from bad to worse, that he had to live by pawning his belongings, and that he stayed on in the Summer Palace. Lao Jin’s article states that, not knowing how to manage his share of the inheritance, he lived off it until it was gone, and that by the time the Japanese army occupied Beiping he was penniless and had to rent a small room in the Haidian area on the outskirts of Beijing, eating nothing but steamed corn bread every day; Chen Lumin’s article states that for a time he depended on a loyal old servant who gathered discarded cabbage leaves in the street and steamed corn bread to fill his stomach; Chen Lumin adds that, pampered and long used to spending freely, he loved company and entertaining, was infatuated with patronizing famous Peking opera actors and with antiques, calligraphy and painting, often spent a fortune at a stroke and in the end was reduced to living by pawning, yet whenever the old servant brought in his meal he kept to his old ways, putting on a napkin and cutting the corn bread into slices with a Western knife and fork to eat with pickled vegetables. The 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article states that during the war against Japan his branch of the family declined steadily and lived by pawning its old possessions. Zhang Chuancai’s account says that his money was soon gone; for his sixtieth birthday Zhang Boju went to offer congratulations and wrote him a couplet setting the heroes once at his gate against a family and country that had become half a dream.⁠[5][16][3][12][15]

Yuan Jiabin recalled that Tang Erhe, head of the education directorate of the Japanese-sponsored regime in North China, and others published in the newspaper Xinmin Bao, without Yuan Keding’s consent, a statement in support of the “New Order in East Asia” bearing his name as a co-signatory; Yuan Keding thereupon published a notice that the signature had been used without his consent and that he did not acknowledge it.⁠[2]

This drew the suspicion of the Japanese military police and secret agents, and for several years afterward a small police car followed and watched him whenever he went out.⁠[2]

Zhang Chuancai’s account says that he published a notice in the press declaring that, being ill, he took no part in any affairs and would receive no visitors.⁠[5]

Both Zhang Boju’s remarks and Zhang Chuancai’s account relate that Doihara Kenji, the Japanese army commander in occupied North China, wanted him to join the puppet regime there and that he declined because it would make him a collaborator; and that when Cao Rulin urged him to sell the garden at Huanshang Village in Zhangde, Henan, to the Japanese he flatly refused, on the ground, in Zhang Boju’s telling, that it was the place where his forebears had risen and was not for their descendants to sell. Zhang Chuancai’s account adds that the Japanese hoped to use his standing to sway the old Beiyang officers. Lao Jin’s article states that in 1936, when Japan was engineering a special status for North China, it tried to draw him in and he flatly refused; Chen Lumin’s article states that Doihara Kenji sent emissaries to him several times with promises of high office and rich pay and that he declined a post in the puppet regime on the ground of ill health; the 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article cites Zhang Boju’s recollection that after North China fell a Japanese intelligence chief tried to draw him into the puppet regime and was rebuffed, and that he said to Zhang Boju that taking office would certainly bring an income but that he could not become a collaborator for the sake of it.⁠[16][5][3][12][15]

After victory in the war against Japan, Chiang Kai-shek flew to Beiping and gave a dinner for the former premier Jin Yunpeng and for Yuan Naikuan, commending the loyalty of both and asking Yuan Naikuan to convey his regards to Yuan Keding. Zhang Boju says that during the war Yuan Keding had tried through connections to ask Chiang Kai-shek to return the confiscated Yuan family property in Henan, and that Chiang Kai-shek did not agree.⁠[2][16]

Yuan Jiabin recalled that Yuan Keding never managed his own livelihood and in old age was several times cheated of his property by servants, relatives and friends, so that he had to move into the home of his cousin Zhang Boju, who bore all his living expenses.⁠[2]

In those remarks Zhang Boju says that he brought Yuan Keding from the Summer Palace to his own residence, Chengzeyuan; Zhang Chuancai’s account dates this to 1948, and the author of Wangshi bing bu ru yan writes that Yuan Keding lodged with the Zhang family for a full ten years.⁠[16][5]

Zhang Boju records in a note to his poems that Yuan Keding lived in his garden residence, Zhanchunyuan, and took a walk every morning; with his old foot injury, and being over seventy, he walked unsteadily. Back in his room he would read Latin, and he painted several album leaves of flowers and insects for Zhang Boju’s wife, Pan Su.⁠[2]

In his remarks Zhang Boju says that Yuan Keding lived upstairs in rooms full of books, most of them German, read and translated every day, was a cultivated and upright man, and never came down for the family’s gatherings for poetry, painting and music; Zhang Chuancai remembers him as thin and short, in a long gown and a small skullcap, leaning on a cane and limping badly, a man who never smoked, spoke little and seemed to her somewhat odd in temper. Zhang Chuancai adds that whenever he had nothing to do he shut himself in his study to read, thread-bound Chinese books as she remembers them, his other pastime being books of chess problems; that he was courteous and kindly to visitors, always greeting them with a slight bow and a nod, and the same with the children; that in summer he often sat or ate in the cool of the broad gateway of his quarters; and that Zhang Boju, who treated him with great respect, would go to see him whenever he had time. She says that in her eyes he was then simply a pitiful, neglected and somewhat solitary old man, whose life grew ever more straitened.⁠[16][5]

Zhang Boju says that Zhang Shizhao, acting as director of the Central Research Institute of Culture and History, arranged a nominal position for Yuan Keding at the institute with a living allowance paid monthly, which came to 50 or 60 yuan a month; Zhang Chuancai’s account says that Zhang Shizhao gave him the status of a member of the institute. Zhang Boju says that each time he received the money Yuan Keding handed it to Pan Su and that he would not let her accept it; Zhang Chuancai’s account likewise says that her father would not let her mother take the money.⁠[16][5]

Zhang Chuancai’s account says that Yenching University was merged into Peking University in 1952 and that in the following year Zhang Boju sold Chengzeyuan to Peking University and bought a house in Xicheng, the western part of the city, for Yuan Keding and his family; Wangshi bing bu ru yan records that after selling Chengzeyuan Zhang Boju moved his household into the city.⁠[5][16]

In his remarks Zhang Boju says that Yuan Keding’s eightieth birthday, in 1958, was celebrated in his home and that it was also in his home that Yuan Keding died; an article in the weekly Fazhi Zhoumo states that Yuan Keding died at the end of the 1950s in Zhang Boju’s home and that Zhang Boju alone saw to the funeral arrangements.⁠[16][14]

Zhang Chuancai’s account says that after Yuan Keding’s death relatives who had not ordinarily been in touch came from Henan and sold the house. She says that the Yuan family, once so illustrious, ended up scattered, and that few people today, she suspects, know what became of Yuan Keding’s branch.⁠[5]

Zhang Chuancai’s account says that Yuan Keding’s first wife was the daughter of a governor of Hunan, that he later took two concubines, and that in the end he lived with his first wife. She adds that his first wife was very stout and particularly fond of mahjong, an ill match for the thin, short Yuan Keding; that he was born in a year of the tiger and she in a year of the dragon, signs held by the old reckoning to clash; and that in his seventies he lived with her as an old couple, though in separate rooms, looked after by his niece, a daughter of Yuan Shikai’s seventeenth son, Yuan Keyou.⁠[5]

Yuan Kewen was known as a collector of old books, and his son Luke Chia-Liu YuanLuke Chia-Liu YuanLuke Chia-Liu Yuan (1912–2003) was a Chinese-born American experimental physicist and the husband of the physicist Chien-Shiung Wu; he worked mainly at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he was a senior physicist. He was elected an academician of Academia Sinica in 1959 and chaired the steering committee of Taiwan’s Synchrotron Radiation Research Center from 1983 to 2002.Open the full entry was a physicist.⁠[17]

Zhang Boju (1898–1982) was the son of a cousin of Yuan Shikai, and his father, Zhang Zhenfang, rose to high office through his kinship with Yuan Shikai; Zhang Boju was close to Yuan Kewen and Yuan Kequan.⁠[2][2][2]

A note by Zhang Boju to one of his poems states that Yuan Keding had what it calls a “cut-sleeve” inclination, the classical expression for love between men; Chan’s paper, quoting the note, explains that its content derives from Zhang Zhenfang’s recollections and calls it inner-chamber talk of the Hongxian period.⁠[2]

Chan’s paper records that in 1913 Yuan Kequan, with his sixth brother Yuan KehuanYuan KehuanYuan Kehuan was the sixth son of Yuan Shikai; he went to Europe in 1913 and attended Cheltenham College in England. His son-in-law Bai Junhe says in an oral account that he entered industry in North China in 1926, served as assistant manager and then general manager of Qixin Yanghui Gongsi (the Qixin cement company), and died in 1956.Open the full entry and his seventh brother Yuan Keqi, accompanied Yan Xiu on a journey to Europe and that the three then attended Cheltenham College in England. A 2008 article in the magazine Huanqiu Renwu states that 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, was a skilled calligrapher.⁠[2][18]

Zhang Ruiji, in a poem mourning Yuan Shikai, used the allusion to Liu Biao’s unworthy son to say that he had led his father astray; Yu Ge identifies the line as referring to Yuan Keding.⁠[13]

Zhang Boju wrote in a note to his poems that at the outset of the Hongxian venture his father, Zhang Zhenfang, urged Yuan Shikai not to take the throne, saying that even if it succeeded it could hardly be carried on, there being no Li Shimin among the next generation; only later did Yuan Shikai come to feel that Yuan Keding had none of the ability of Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong of the Tang, and by then it was too late. Chan’s paper states that Zhang Boju disapproved of his urging his father to the throne but mostly wrote of it in a bantering tone in his poems: poem 43, as the paper reads it, says that although his position as heir had never been settled he already liked people to kowtow to him and carried himself as crown prince, and poem 100 teases him for disliking osmanthus and having the osmanthus trees moved away. The paper also observes that Zhang Boju bore him no grudge. In his remarks Zhang Boju says that Yuan Keding spent most of his life at his father’s side, devising plans for Yuan Shikai, and enjoyed wealth and honors himself.⁠[2][16]

In verse Zhang Boju praised him for keeping his integrity under the Japanese occupation; Chan’s paper judges that in his later years his conduct on matters of principle was beyond reproach and notes that Zhang Boju’s portrayal of him mixes praise and blame. Chen Lumin’s article states that popular memory casts him as a kind of clown, forever jumping about and stirring up trouble, and that he was reputed to be one of the Four Young Masters of the capital, but that while the first half of his life has nothing to recommend it, not a single merit, the second half has its bright spots and in matters of principle he did not fail. Li Xianzhe’s article states that some historians hold that Yuan Shikai’s enthronement owed much to his urging. The 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article records a saying in the Yuan family: the eldest son, Yuan Keding, had the most power, the second, Yuan Kewen, the most talent, and the sixth, Yuan Kehuan, the most money. Zhang Chuancai recalls that when she was at school in the 1940s and 1950s her textbooks denounced the ambitious Yuan Keding, whereas the man she saw at home was a down-at-heel old man in his seventies, nothing like the scheming modern Cao Pi of films and of history and literature books.⁠[2][2][12][4][15][5]