Yuan Kezhen

Zhang Boju relates in his annotated Xu Hongxian jishi shi that after Yuan Shikai’s death his principal wife, Lady Yu, lived at Huanshang village in Zhangde, and that one year he went with Yuan Shikai’s fourth to eighth sons to congratulate her on her birthday; they were received in the rear hall and greeted her with family rites, in a plain, countrified manner.⁠[1]

In another note Zhang Boju relates that one year, when he and these brothers rode together to Huanshang for Lady Yu’s birthday, the talk during the ride turned to which historical figure Yuan Shikai could be compared to: the 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, named Cao Cao and Wang Mang, the 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, said Huan Wen, and that settled the discussion.⁠[1]

When his father-in-law, Zhou Fu (1837–1921), died, he sent a funeral couplet saying that Zhou Fu had recognized Yuan Shikai as a hero before his rise, a loyalty to old ways rarely found, and that of all those who understood his father, Zhou Fu had been the first.⁠[2]

Nicholas L. Chan’s 2019 paper states that Yuan Shikai had 17 sons and 15 daughters.⁠[1]

Bai Junhe is the husband of Yuan Jiaxin, the youngest daughter of Yuan Kehuan. He says that Yuan Kezhen’s mother, Lady Yang, was Yuan Shikai’s fifth consort; some history books give her home as Yangliuqing in Tianjin, but as far as he knows she came from Yixingfu in Tianjin, from a family that was not prominent but was a comfortably off local household of flower growers and sellers. He adds that Lady Yang had a good head and something of a modern outlook but confined herself to the household and kept out of politics; that she owed Yuan Shikai’s trust largely to her thrifty and impartial management; and that Yuan Shikai gave her the coordination and management of the sixth to ninth consorts who came after her.⁠[3]

Yuan Jiacheng, the second son of Yuan Shikai’s tenth son, 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, said in a 2016 interview that Lady Yang came from Yixingfu in Tianjin and was of rather humble origin but good with money, that Yuan Shikai later put the household’s finances in her hands, and that her descendants were all good with money too.⁠[4]

Bai Junhe further says that, counting Yuan Shikai’s sons as fifteen, the four sons Lady Yang bore were the sixth, Yuan Kehuan, the eighth, Yuan Kezhen, the ninth, 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, and the eleventh, 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, all of whom she sent to school in England or 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 when they were very young; he had heard that before her death she asked her sons to stay out of politics, because Yuan Shikai had risen as high as politics could take him, as president of the Republic and then emperor, and had found that height cold, lonely and very hard.⁠[3]

His wife, Zhou Ruizhu, was a daughter of Zhou Fu, which made Zhou Fu and Yuan Shikai co-parents-in-law. Zhou Qiqian, a descendant of Zhou Fu, points out that a letter Zhou Fu wrote to Yuan Kezhen’s 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, at about the end of 1915 addresses him as a relative by marriage and in very courteous terms, and that this marriage is the reason.⁠[2]

Wang Birong’s book on the family history of the descendants of Yuan Shikai’s fifth consort, Lady Yang, writes that Yuan Kezhen also had a concubine, Lady Bian, whom the third generation of the family called da mama (elder mama).⁠[5]

Wang Jun’s essay states that Zhou Fu served as customs taotai at Tianjin, as Tianjin military taotai and as judicial and financial commissioner of Zhili; after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 he spent more than two years in retirement and returned to office to direct the Yellow River works for Li Hongzhang; within a few years he rose from governor of Shandong to governor-general of Liangjiang, a post he took up in 1904, and then of Liangguang, with the rank of a board president; after less than a year in Guangdong he asked to retire to his home, and on leaving the Liangguang post in 1906 he left official life.⁠[6]

Bai Junhe says that before the Cultural Revolution he saw many well-kept sets of photograph albums at the home of his father-in-law, Yuan Kehuan, with a large number of photographs of Lady Yang and photographs of Yuan Shikai fishing at Zhangde in Henan, and that in August 1966 the Red Guards burned them, so that very few survived; Yuan Kezhen’s daughter, Yuan Jiayun, has lived in Canada for decades, her husband was a senior press officer of Taiwan in Canada, and she holds photographs of Lady Yang.⁠[3]

Bai Junhe says that all four of Lady Yang’s sons came into contact with Western thought and culture while studying abroad and after returning did something to build up Chinese-owned industry: after the sixth brother, Yuan Kehuan, returned from England he took up the development of Chinese-owned industry with the support of three younger brothers, the eighth, Yuan Kezhen, the ninth, Yuan Kejiu, and the eleventh, Yuan Ke’an; Yuan Kezhen died relatively early, having played some part in helping Yuan Kehuan establish the family’s position in the large enterprises of the north.⁠[3]

Zhou Qiqian’s 2016 article and Wang Birong’s book write the last character of his given name with one character, and Bai Junhe’s 2014 oral account with another, both romanized zhen.⁠[2][3][5]