Yuan Kequan

Yuan Kequan’s courtesy name was Gui’an, and his family came from Xiangcheng, Henan.⁠[1][2]

His mother, Lady Wu, was Yuan Shikai’s second concubine and a Korean.⁠[1]

In his youth he studied under Yan Xiu, Fang Dishan and Wu Kaisheng and became skilled in poetry and prose. Wu Kaisheng was the son of Wu Rulun, a late-Qing master of the Tongcheng school, and Nicholas L. Chan’s paper holds that the poetry of Wu Kaisheng and of Yuan Kequan continued the Tongcheng line of fusing the manners of the Tang and the Song.⁠[1][1]

Zhang Boju relates in his annotated Xu Hongxian jishi shi that in the xinhai year (1911) he and Yuan Shikai’s fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh sons were fellow students at Xinxue Shuyuan (the Xinxue academy). The note adds that they took their midday meal there after classes and that a Mr. Fansun sometimes came to see them, examined them on their lessons and gave them earnest counsel.⁠[1]

In 1913 he, 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 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 accompanied Yan Xiu on a journey to Europe, and the three then attended Cheltenham College in England.⁠[1][2]

Wang Birong’s book Bainian Yuanjia states that the three brothers spent only one year and three months at the school, that the headmaster lived with them and they were coached in English, and that they left without a formal diploma; from the school she also obtained a photograph of the three watching a football match with English schoolmates. Wang Birong writes that their faces in the photograph seem somewhat melancholy, perhaps because it was the first time they had left home and the large Yuan household for an entirely strange place and country.⁠[1]

The Reverend Reginald Waterfield was the school’s headmaster from 1899 to 1919. Nicholas L. Chan’s paper states that when they left England the headmaster gave them parting words that stayed in his memory; he wrote a poem in remembrance of the headmaster and his wife that mentions those parting words.⁠[1]

The 2019 paper by Nicholas L. Chan states that war broke out in Europe the year after he went to England and that he broke off his studies and returned home; a 2022 article in the Tianjin newspaper Jinwan Bao gives the year of his return as 1915.⁠[1][2]

His granddaughter Yuan Xin has said that soon after his return he was married, by Yuan Shikai’s arrangement, to Tao Yong, a daughter of the late-Qing official Duanfang, in about 1914. The paper notes that Duanfang was killed in the xinhai year while acting governor-general of Sichuan, and Yuan Xin says that afterwards the atmosphere in Tao Yong’s family was bleak and fearful, that her husband’s family fortunately took her in, and that her husband was a modest gentleman of talent and learning who, above all, treated her well, so that in all their lives they never exchanged a cross word.⁠[1][1]

Tao Yong’s dowry included a baina (patchwork) edition of the Shiji, from which he took his sobriquet Baina. He treasured this Shiji. In a note to his annotated Xu Hongxian jishi shi Zhang Boju says that Duanfang gave as dowry the baina Shiji, a painting of winter-sweet and narcissus by Qiu Shizhou and Chen Hu’s painting Ziyun chuyu tu; Chan’s paper points out that the note is mistaken here, since Duanfang was already dead when Yuan Kequan married, so the dowry was not given by Duanfang himself.⁠[1][1][1]

Duanfang had been killed in the xinhai year while serving as acting governor-general of Sichuan.⁠[1]

After his return he studied poetry and prose with Wu Beijiang; in 1915 he wrote eight seven-character regulated poems on the Eight Views of Yanjing, which his teacher praised highly, furnished with a colophon and had printed in a newspaper. The Jinwan Bao article states that by then his writing was already of considerable accomplishment, and it prints in full one of the eight poems, on the spring shade of Qionghua Island.⁠[2]

Yi Ku’an admired him greatly and called him a peerless young gentleman.⁠[2]

Wu Kaisheng wrote a preface for his Baina shiji; in Wenyi conglu, printed by the newspaper Dagong Bao in the early Republic, the same preface appears as Yuan Gui’an gongzi shi xu over the name Pijiang, whom Chan’s paper takes to be Wang Pijiang, noting that the authorship remains to be settled. The preface praises the vigor of his talent, saying that he had barely reached twenty and had already filled volumes; the paper reads the preface as crediting his talent and the abundance of his verse to natural gifts and family background. Sun Hanya (1866–1941) also praised the beauty of his writing and the striking quality of his lines in a poem addressed to him.⁠[1][1]

Chan’s paper states that during the Hongxian monarchy he was favored by his father and, like his eldest brother Yuan KedingYuan KedingYuan Keding, courtesy name Yuntai, was the eldest son of Yuan Shikai; fluent in German and English, he commanded the Army Model Regiment and in 1915 was a core member of the Chouanhui, the society that campaigned for a constitutional monarchy; he came to be called the “crown prince of Hongxian.” After Yuan Shikai’s death he lived for a time in seclusion; under the Japanese occupation he disavowed in print a statement supporting the “New Order in East Asia” that had been published over his name without his consent, and he spent his last years in the household of his cousin Zhang Boju, dying at the end of the 1950s.Open the full entry and his 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, wore the dress of a crown prince.⁠[1]

In the first year of Hongxian (1916) he wrote a poem commemorating a Spring Festival banquet at the Jurentang, included in his Ouquanguan shiji; the paper notes that it is the only surviving poem by any of Yuan Shikai’s sons now known to deal with the activities of the monarchy.⁠[1]

The paper judges that, being more reserved than his second brother, he was not without sympathy for his father’s assumption of the throne, while also using his poems to remonstrate with him indirectly.⁠[1][1]

After Yuan Shikai died in 1916 he wrote the Shanlu shiji during the mourning period; it opens with four poems of lament. In the same period he wrote other poems, among them three composed in the mourning hut on the day of the interment, one on visiting the grave at the Mid-Autumn Festival and one written a hundred days after the death; in a poem titled Mocui (black mourning garb) he wrote of weeping daily beside the new grave in his mourning clothes, which the paper reads as showing how deeply his father’s death affected him.⁠[1][1]

He then joined his brothers in escorting their father’s coffin to Huanshang for burial. At Huanshang for the funeral he thought of his father’s work left unfinished, like that of Xiang Yu, and wrote a poem on the King of Chu, which the paper reads as saying one thing to mean another. In the same year he addressed a poem to his fourth brother, 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, recalling how in late spring he had gone with him to Yingtai and brought back dozens of cut peonies to set on the table, and how their father died before the flowers had faded; the paper notes that he was then only eighteen. Zhang Yongjiu writes that with Yuan Shikai’s death Yuan Kequan’s dreams for his family and his country came to an end.⁠[1][1][1]

Thereafter he lived in seclusion in Tianjin, often pawning family property to get by and occupying himself with writing. The Jinwan Bao article describes his life in Tianjin as that of a recluse in the midst of the city.⁠[1][2]

He drank and wrote verse with Yan Xiu, Fang Dishan, Zhang Boju and others, and exchanged poems with his brothers. Nicholas L. Chan’s paper names among those with whom he exchanged verse in these years his elder brothers Yuan Keding, Yuan Kewen and Yuan Keduan and the scholars Yan Xiu, Fang Dishan, Zhang Boju and Sun Hanya. The paper also cites Zhang Yongjiu for the report that he was well acquainted with newspaper writers and that many episodes of Zhang Henshui’s novel Jinfen shijia were heard from him.⁠[2][1]

Between 1917 and 1920 he had six collections printed in succession: Baina shiji, Ouquanguan shiji, Shanlu shiji, Nongchaoguan shiji, Baina shicun and Chanxilou shicun, containing poems from the jiayin year (1914) to the gengshen year (1920). The Jinwan Bao article lists only three as in circulation: Baina shiji, Ouquanguan shiji and Chanxilou shicun.⁠[1][2]

He continued to publish new poems in newspapers and periodicals from time to time, but no further collection is known.⁠[1]

After Yuan Kewen’s death he wrote a lament of twenty-six rhymes for his second brother, printed in the Beiyang Huabao (vol. 14, no. 675) on September 10, 1931; Nicholas L. Chan’s paper finds the grief it pours out unlike anything before and a sign of the depth of their bond.⁠[1]

The Jinwan Bao article states that he died of illness in August 1941 at his home in the British concession in Tianjin.⁠[2]

Chan’s paper states that he suffered from depression from middle age and finally died sitting cross-legged and refusing food, and it gives his age at death as 44.⁠[1]

In 2008 Yuan Xin and her husband Yang Daning re-set the six collections as Yuan Kequan shiji, published by Tianjin Guji Chubanshe (Tianjin ancient-books press) to mark the 110th anniversary of his birth.⁠[1]

Two of them, Baina shicun and Chanxilou shicun, had been preserved by Yuan Xin’s aunt Yuan Jiayi; the other four were photocopied from the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library.⁠[1]

Yuan Shikai had 17 sons and 15 daughters.⁠[1]

Yuan Xin has said that he never took a concubine and that he and Tao Yong had four sons and four daughters.⁠[1]

Among the poems in his collections exchanged with his brothers, the largest number, 13, were addressed to Yuan Kewen, followed by 10 to his fourth brother Yuan Keduan, four to Yuan Keding and one to Yuan Keqi, with four more addressed to his brothers collectively. In 1920, when his ninth brother 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, tenth brother 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, eleventh brother 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 twelfth brother 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 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 with Yuan Jiarong, the son of Yuan Keding, he wrote a poem of farewell to them at Wusong. The paper reads the poem as showing him, who had once broken off his own studies in England, now ashamed of his advancing years and placing high hopes in his brothers and nephew that they would succeed in their studies and restore the family’s standing.⁠[1][1]

Zhang Boju relates that he once rode with Yuan Shikai’s fourth to eighth sons to Huanshang village in Zhangde for the birthday of Yuan Shikai’s principal wife, Lady Yu; when the talk on the way turned to which historical figure their father resembled, Yuan Keduan named Cao Cao and Wang Mang, Yuan Kequan said he could be compared to Huan Wen, and the company settled on that. The note adds that after Yuan Shikai’s death Lady Yu lived at Huanshang village, that they were received in the rear hall and paid their respects with family rites, and that the occasion had a simple, rustic air. Nicholas L. Chan’s paper judges that, though they were Yuan Shikai’s sons, Yuan Keduan and the others were fair in their verdict on their father, seeing both his fame and his infamy, and that Yuan Kequan, though not the eldest, spoke to the point and was respected by his brothers for it.⁠[1]

Chan’s paper judges that his poetry owes much to Li Shangyin. The paper attributes this both to his personality and to his family: an upbringing in luxury lent his diction the ornate brilliance of the late Tang, while his deep and reserved character made the import of his poems recondite; after Yuan Shikai’s death in 1916 his father’s posthumous reputation declined steadily, which brought him many setbacks and left his poems compelled to speak yet, for fear of finding no sympathy, all the more reticent. The paper also notes that his collections contain many poems touching on his family’s past, and that some of his poems on history are tied to his father’s life.⁠[1]

Xu Xu, writing in Bainian jiazu (2012), a volume edited by the Xiangcheng committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, describes his poetry as continuing the late-Tang manner, stirred by the spirit of Li Houzhu, and as mellow, plaintive and genuinely felt. In his essay on Yuan Kequan as a detached recluse, included in Bainian jiazu, Xu Xu also writes that of the many princes and grandsons of a dying age in the twentieth century few old-family sons were like him in regarding themselves as a jade flower of the Xie hall and declining to depend on others, and that he did not let the rise and fall of his family disturb his temper, styled himself a lingzhi and kept to his lofty independence. Xu Xu adds that, unlike Yuan Keding, he was not eager for politics and, unlike Yuan Kewen, did not give himself up to poetry, wine and gallantry, yet held to his integrity in troubled times and kept striving in adversity, a credit to the Yuan family, and that his poems savor a bitterness and melancholy both ordinary and his own.⁠[1][1][1]

The Jinwan Bao article holds that among Yuan Shikai’s sons Yuan Kewen was the most celebrated for poetry and calligraphy and that he came next.⁠[2]

Nicholas L. Chan’s paper describes him as honest and sparing of words, aloof and introverted, and, being steady and sound in learning, held in high regard among his brothers.⁠[1]

The paper also calls him precocious, mature beyond his years and unusually strong in his joys and sorrows, which often found their way into poems; it contrasts his deep, reserved temperament with the unrestrained, headstrong and versatile Yuan Kewen, and says that poetry was the only literary form in which he constructed himself.⁠[1]

In its conclusion the paper holds that, not being the eldest son of the principal wife, he, though talented and favored by his father, developed his precocious, deep and reserved character because of his interrupted schooling in England and the failure of the monarchy; that throughout his forty-odd years he lived almost wholly in the shadow of his father and his second brother, hemmed in, without means of earning a living and forgotten; and that poetry became his chief spiritual support.⁠[1]

Nicholas L. Chan’s paper discusses his poems in three groups: those depicting his father, those exchanged with his brothers and those lamenting his own lot. The second of his laments for Europe was written in 1914, the year in which, the paper notes, the war made him break off his studies in England and return home, and the paper takes its master player who will win a perilous game to mean his father.⁠[1]

A ballad on the Yuanming Yuan laments that the luxury of the Qing court had passed like smoke before the eyes, and the paper finds in it an unmistakable hope that his father would rule frugally and become a sage sovereign; a poem on sitting at evening in the Yanqing Tower turns around a line in which Yuan Kewen had warned against climbing to the top storey of the jade tower, and the paper reads it as only seeming to favor his father’s assumption of the throne.⁠[1]

When the monarchy movement was at its height he wrote a poem on a picture of Napoleon BonaparteNapoleon BonaparteNapoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), known as Napoleon I, was a French military leader and statesman who was first consul of the French Republic from 1799 to 1804 and emperor of the French from 1804 to 1814 and again in 1815. In 1803 he sold the Louisiana territory to the United States, and in 1804 he promulgated the French Civil Code.Open the full entry marooned on his island, lamenting Napoleon’s defeat within his own lifetime; the paper notes that Yuan Shikai was then called China’s Napoleon and that the poem’s anxiety needs no spelling out.⁠[1]

One of his ten poems recalling the past at the Ye garden, on the Fishing Pavilion, concerns the Yangshou garden at Huanshang, and the paper reads its last line as a hope that his father, already president and seeking the throne, would know when to advance and when to withdraw. Chen Fangke’s inscription for Baina shicun praises him and ends by asking, with an allusion to Cao Zhi, how often one sees poems of admonition; the paper notes that Yuan Kewen, outstanding in talent and held down by his elder brother, was then likened to Cao Zhi, that Chen Fangke could fittingly turn the comparison to Yuan Kequan, and that he too wrote poems admonishing his father.⁠[1]

In the four laments that open Shanlu shiji he calls his father the dark dragon, which the paper reads as still imperial in thought, while their phrase about hard times echoes Yuan Shikai’s earlier order cancelling the monarchy.⁠[1]

In Baina shicun a poem recording a dream tells how in the dream his late father saw his wives and children again, and tears fell; the paper finds that he did not regard the monarchy as usurpation but compared it to the story of the Duke of Zhou and the Metal-Bound Coffer, believing his father to have acted for the common good.⁠[1]

The paper observes that his poems about his father mostly speak through figures such as the master player, the sage king, Napoleon, the fisherman, the dark dragon and the King of Chu, seldom plainly; only the poem on the Spring Festival banquet of the first Hongxian year, written to order, is more direct. It attributes this both to awe and caution and to his reserved nature.⁠[1]

Nicholas L. Chan’s paper states that while their father was alive the whole family lived in Zhongnanhai and that many of the brothers’ poems were written over banquets. The Jingxin Studio on the north shore of Beihai, originally called the Jingqing Studio and built in 1757, the 22nd year of Qianlong, as a study for imperial princes, served under Yuan Shikai as a place where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs entertained guests and housed a school for the family’s sons.⁠[1]

Lian Quan (1868–1931), in a colophon to the copy of Nongchaoguan shiji held by the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library, wrote that he and his second brother, Yuan Kewen, both enjoyed a reputation as poets. His poem matching Yuan Kewen’s rhymes on a banquet at the Jingxin Studio portrays the gathering as sumptuous yet refined, and the paper sees in it his respectful affection for his second brother; two poems were sent to Yuan Kewen at Liangxi while he was travelling in the south; and in a poem answering a letter from him, written amid mixed grief and joy, the paper finds Yuan Kewen brought to life, carefree, poor and ill, fond of books and of wine, and reads its portrayal of his brother’s destitution as an expression of Yuan Kequan’s self-pity.⁠[1]

With his fourth brother, Yuan Keduan, who was close to him in age, he exchanged among others a poem written at a second gathering at the Jingxin Studio, calm and lovely in tone, in which the paper sees him lamenting his abandoned studies in England and his lost ideals and likening himself to the young lotus leaves.⁠[1]

The paper notes that the Yuan household was strictly governed, so that boating on Beihai free of constraint was a rare pleasure, and in a poem on boating there with his younger brothers on an early-autumn night he delighted in it so much that he forgot to go home.⁠[1]

The paper states that the Yuan family held Yuan Keding responsible for compromising their father and bringing about his sudden death, and so mostly kept away from him after Yuan Shikai died; yet Yuan Kequan, twenty years his junior, wrote to him in verse on four occasions after their father’s death, with a birthday poem of ten rhymes, a poem of ten rhymes sent to him, two New Year poems sent to him at Huanshang and a poem on current affairs, which the paper takes to show that he still held to the idea that the eldest brother stands in the father’s place.⁠[1]

In a poem for his own twentieth birthday he laments that his talents are nearly spent yet rejoices at having cast off official rank and regained his freedom; the paper notes that he regarded the misfortunes that befell him amid the imperial parks as Heaven’s deliberate trial of him.⁠[1]

In a regulated verse written on a winter night at Huanxizhuang he still hoped one day to volunteer for service, like Zhong Jun of the Han.⁠[1]

From a poem stating his aims the paper concludes that he could only live a poor life in the company of the wine cup, earning his living by selling his writing. His first untitled poem, in Shanlu shiji, speaks of long illness in late autumn, of listlessness and of lying aslant behind the curtain listening to the water.⁠[1][1]

Their granddaughter Yuan Xin says that he and Tao Yong loved each other dearly. Zhang Yongjiu says that many of his love poems titled “Untitled” were dedicated to Tao Yong; Nicholas L. Chan’s paper agrees, but finds in their warmth less the happiness of the newly married than the comfort of a couple supporting each other after great upheavals.⁠[1]

In a poem on chatting with his wife about old times he hopes that, once free of cares, they might set off together in a small boat, and he also wrote poems sent to her; to his poem on lilacs Tao Yong replied with a poem of her own, printed in Funü zazhi (vol. 5, no. 9) in 1919.⁠[1]

Nicholas L. Chan’s paper states that Zhang Boju (1898–1982), a younger relative of Yuan Shikai through a female line, was born in the same year as Yuan Kequan, that both were witnesses of the Hongxian monarchy and members of the Yuan family circle, and that Zhang Boju saw much of Yuan Kewen and Yuan Kequan.⁠[1]

He wrote a poem to celebrate Zhang Boju’s wedding. In a note Zhang Boju writes that among Yuan Shikai’s sons the one with literary talent besides Yuan Kewen was Yuan Kequan, who modelled his verse on Li Shangyin; the paper remarks that his poetic reputation was second only to Yuan Kewen’s and that Zhang Boju did not dispute this.⁠[1]

Another note records that Zhang Boju wanted Chen Hu’s scroll Ziyun chuyu tu, part of Tao Yong’s dowry; Fang Dishan was then in dire poverty, and Zhang Boju agreed with him to set a generous price, Zhang paying more and Yuan Kequan receiving less, so as to help Fang Dishan, who acted as go-between at an agreed price of 3,000 yuan; Yuan Kequan resolutely parted with the scroll, kept half the price and gave the other half to Fang Dishan. The paper writes that he agreed to sell the painting to Zhang Boju to relieve the distress of his teacher Fang Dishan, and that where Zhang Boju had deliberately paid more in the hope that he would pass part of the money on, he instead divided the whole sum equally with Fang Dishan; it sees in this his old-fashioned warm-heartedness, which earned Zhang Boju’s deep respect.⁠[1]

In its conclusion the paper notes that Zhang Boju praised him highly, and that Zhang Boju’s record of his comparing his father to Huan Wen shows him striking a good balance between filial attachment and historical perspective, a comparison that appears nowhere in his own collections.⁠[1]