Visiting the Tomb of Li Zhi (Li Zhuowu)

On the evening of Saturday, September 19, I discussed with my son: "Where shall we cycle tomorrow? Shall we go deep into the mountains of Mentougou to see the autumn scenery, or go to Tongzhou to pay respects at Li Zhuowu's tomb?" My son, who had already been to the Mentougou mountains several times in a row, chose Li Zhuowu's tomb.

Li Zhuowu was a native of Quanzhou, Fujian. His original name was Li Zaizhi; to avoid the emperor's naming taboo he changed it to Li Zhi, and Zhuowu was his courtesy name.

Li Zhi was a famous thinker of the late Ming dynasty. He was imprisoned for fiercely attacking Confucianism, the mainstream ideology of the Ming, and died by suicide in prison. Li Zhuowu's thought was far ahead of his time; even today many of his ideas remain valuable.

But such a man was bound to be unacceptable to the Ming emperor and his officials. Almost single-handedly, Li Zhi stirred up a trend of anti-Confucian thought. Two of his daughters starved to death, so he knew full well that empty talk ruins the state: "Wearing clothes and eating food is human ethics and natural principle"—this was Li Zhi's heartfelt cry.

He mocked Confucianism's pedantry and impracticality. To draw a clear line with the Confucians, and because he refused to accept many worldly conventions, he shaved his head and became a monk. In the temple he openly hung scrolls mocking Confucius, declared that he could not live without meat, advocated gender equality, associated with several outstanding women of his time, and exchanged poems and writings with them frequently—much to the scandal of the age.

Li Zhi was a learned, open-minded, truth-seeking, yet flamboyant personality. Living in an authoritarian society, a man who dared to challenge authoritarian thought was fated to a bad end. The Confucianism he attacked was the very livelihood on which many people depended. So the defenders of orthodoxy all attacked Li Zhi, wishing to destroy him.

The Wanli Emperor of the Ming was the most famous lazy ruler in history, but when his officials memorialized that Li Zhi was spreading heresy to delude the age, he became unusually serious and immediately decreed: "Li Zhi dares to advocate perverse doctrines and delude the people; let the Embroidered-Uniform Guard and the five-city authorities arrest him strictly and punish him. All his books, carved or uncarved, are to be sought out and burned by the local officials, and none may be preserved. If any followers shield him or secretly keep his books, once discovered and memorialized by the relevant offices, they shall be punished together."

Once this edict issued, no one dared plead for Li Zhi. Although Li Zhi, who had held the Ming office of "2,000 shi," was already over seventy and bedridden, he was thrown into the imperial prison. In prison, Li Zhi left the line "What does a seventy-year-old man seek?", seized the razor from his attendant, and cut his own throat. After his death, his friends, following his will, buried him in what is today's Tongzhou District, Beijing.

I recommended several books to my son to help him understand Li Zhi's era and Li Zhi himself—1587, a Year of No Significance (Ray Huang), Biography of Li Zhi (Yan Lieshan), and Burning Books (Fenshu, by Li Zhi). All were already on my shelves.

My son asked me: "Dad, I am going to study mathematics and pursue academic research; why should I study history?" I told him that history is reality, and reality is history. We today repeat the stories of those before us, and people tomorrow will repeat our stories. We must learn wisdom—and the wisdom of survival—from Li Zhi's gains and losses.

To be honest, I had my own purpose in taking my son to pay respects at Li Zhi's tomb. I wanted the child to recognize the cruelty of political struggle. At the tomb I told him that Li Zhi and Hai Rui were contemporaries, and that The Dismissal of Hai Rui became the fuse of the Cultural Revolution; along the way I told him about some of the upheavals China went through after the Cultural Revolution. Some he can learn from history books, others he cannot. I also recommended to him Ji Xianlin's Miscellaneous Memories of a Cow Shed and Tang Degang's Yuan Shikai Presides over China, hoping he would learn more wisdom for survival from these works.

The world is becoming more complex, and major historical events may occur in the coming years. My son's generation is called the "strawberry generation," lacking education in setbacks; I am not sure whether they will lose themselves in the waves of history. I hope that, whatever happens in the future, my child can remain calm and rational and possess the ability to think independently.

My wife asked whether it was too early to tell the child these things. I said it was not; at his age the child is highly malleable, and high school is when a person's worldview, values and outlook on life take shape. As parents, appropriate guidance is essential. We cannot wait until others have misled our children with false, extreme and narrow ideas and then regret it too late.

I do not want my son to become someone who forgets fairness and justice for profit, someone indifferent to others and society, or someone with a simple-minded political outlook. These are also my own basic principles in engaging with the world.

Li Zhi died, but the Ming dynasty did not change, nor did China. The Qing dynasty that followed still took the Confucianism remodeled by Dong Zhongshu as orthodoxy, binding and imprisoning the Chinese people's nature and thought, until, in modern times, upheavals finally took place amid internal crisis and foreign aggression.

Only when the social environment changes can a society gradually cast off its inertia and change. When the times do not change, society is inert and does not alter much. Li Zhi died in vain precisely because the social environment was not yet ripe.

We live within society; we must see through the laws of social development to avoid making a futile sacrifice like Li Zhi.