In the early morning of September 21, 1898, the Empress Dowager Cixi hurried into the Forbidden City in a sedan chair in Jinluan, and then she quickly took control of the Guangxu Emperor, and announced in the main hall that "the court listens to the government" and wantonly hunted down the reformers, which is known in history as the "Wuxu Coup", and the "Wuxu Six Gentlemen" were blood-stained on the execution ground.
What made the Empress Dowager Cixi angry was that Kang Youwei, the leader of the reformers, actually became a fish that slipped through the net.
As the saying goes, "If you can escape a monk, you can't escape the temple", so what will be the end of Kang Youwei's family?
Speaking of which, Kang Youwei, who was born in a bureaucratic landlord family, should have been a high school jinshi in his original life, glorifying his ancestors, and since then he has been on a successful career ever since.
Kang Youwei does have his merits, that is, while he is well-read, he also has a lot of research on Western studies, and has been to Hong Kong and other colonies to increase his knowledge. This made him realize that the capitalist system in Western countries was more advanced than the feudal system in China.
Look at the Qing Empire at that time, it was in the midst of internal and external troubles, and the corrupt and incompetent Qing ** could only be slaughtered by the foreign powers. This made him realize that only by learning from the West could he save his country from danger. Therefore, by drawing on the evolutionary theory and political views of Western countries, he finally built a relatively complete system of reform and reform.
In 1895, Kang Youwei entered Beijing to take the examination, entered high school, and was awarded the title of director of the Ministry of Industry. For the Lao Kang family, this is a happy event worthy of sacrificing to the ancestors. And the family also has a strong influence in the local area because of a Beijing official.
However, it was also this year, due to the defeat of the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing ** signed the "Treaty of Shimonoseki" with Japan, which increased the burden of the people at the same time, and was undoubtedly condemned by the people of the whole country. As a patriot, Kang Youwei naturally couldn't hold back, so he repeatedly wrote to ask for a change in the law, and put forward a series of steps to change the law in order to "enrich the people, support the people, clergy, and train the army."
However, under the repeated obstruction of conservatives, Kang Youwei's recital was not sent to Emperor Guangxu's case for a long time.
Fortunately, Kang Youwei has made up his mind, so he continues to write books, hoping to carry out top-down political reform as soon as possible.
Kang Youwei not only actively wrote books, but also wrote "Japan's Meiji Political Examination" and "Russia's Great Peter Political Change", and established the National Protection Association with Liang Qichao to call on more people to participate in the team of saving the country and the people.
In 1898, Emperor Guangxu finally saw Kang Youwei's recital, and was deeply impressed by Kang Youwei's changes. So in June of this year, Emperor Guangxu summoned Kang Youwei, and after some conversation, Emperor Guangxu, who wanted to make a career, soon promoted Kang Youwei to Prime Minister Yamen Zhangjing, which opened the curtain of the Restoration.
However, the change of law in history has always been difficult.
The changes proposed by Kang Youwei involve a very large number of aspects, including politics, economy, culture, and military affairs. In the process of reforming the law, the interests of the royal family and nobles and others were damaged, so from the beginning of the reform, the conservatives and the reform party launched a fierce game, so that it was very difficult to promote the reform.
In order to seize power, Kang Youwei once secretly advised Emperor Guangxu to "besiege the Summer Palace and hunt down the Queen Mother". However, due to the leakage of the news, the Empress Dowager Cixi quickly put the Guangxu Emperor under house arrest and, with the support of conservatives, announced that she would return to the court.
In this way, the changes that Kang Youwei actively promoted also died. At this time, it was only a hundred days since the law was changed, and Kang Youwei and other reformers were also brutally suppressed by the Empress Dowager Cixi.
Kang Youwei was not a pedantic scholar, and after hearing the news, he boarded a cruise ship from Shanghai to Japan, and since then he has lived a life of exile overseas.
Kang Youwei ran away, but his family suffered great misfortune.
For example, among the "Six Gentlemen of Wuxu" at the mouth of the blood-stained vegetable market, there is Kang Youwei's brother Kang Guangren.
Kang Guangren is a person with a gentle personality, when Kang Youwei changed the law, he once thought that the change was too fast, and the Guangxu Emperor had no real power, so it was difficult to succeed, so it was better to go back to Guangdong first, run education with peace of mind, write books and speak, and cultivate more patriotic talents. In this way, in another three years, there will definitely be achievements, and when the time comes, we will be able to succeed if we change the Fa again.
It can be said that Kang Guangren is not very supportive of changing the law.
Kang Youwei not only ran away, but he also called the Empress Dowager Cixi a "pseudo-dynasty" overseas, and scolded the Empress Dowager Cixi for his rebellion against Emperor Guangxu, and also called on overseas patriots to enter King Qin in Beijing to crusade against the Empress Dowager Cixi.
The Empress Dowager Cixi is the kind of lord who "makes me unhappy for a while, I will make him unhappy for the rest of his life". She has repeatedly negotiated with Japan, hoping that Japan will repatriate Kang Youwei. But the Japanese ** did not let her get her wish, so Cixi, who was furious, burned her anger on the Kang family and Kang Youwei's students.
Because Kang Guangren was Kang Youwei's younger brother, he became the first target to be killed when he was sentenced to death with Tan Si and others. It is said that Kang Guangren cried in prison before his death: "Oh my God, my brother committed something, but I have to be my brother's to take the cylinder." ”
In addition, immediately after the failure of the Wuxu Reform, there was news that "Kang Youwei had been killed", and Zhang Yunzhu, the original wife who stayed in her hometown in Guangdong to take care of housework, realized that her family would definitely be implicated, so she packed her luggage overnight and fled to Hong Kong with the family ferry.
Sure enough, Zhang Yunzhu fled with his family on the front foot, and Li Hongzhang brought people to arrest him on the back foot. Due to the emptiness, in order to make a difference, the officials razed the ancestral grave of Kang Youwei's family to the ground.
At that time, Kang Youwei's two favorite daughters, Kang Tongwei and Kang Tongbi, also went into exile in Hong Kong with their mother. For the safety of her two daughters, Zhang Yunzhu fostered them both in different relatives' homes.
At that time, Kang Tongwei was 21 years old, and strictly speaking, she was also a participant in the reform of the law. So after she got in touch with Kang Youwei in Hong Kong, she became Kang Youwei's plenipotentiary in Hong Kong. On the one hand, she dutifully completed the work assigned by Kang Youwei, and on the other hand, when someone published in the press that Kang Youwei's unfavorable political opinions, she would go to the wife of the Hong Kong Governor to defend her father. At the same time, she also continues to write articles to create ** for Kang Youwei.
Kang Tongwei not only has her own career in Hong Kong, but she also married Kang Youwei's ** Mai Zhonghua.
However, Kang Youwei and Mai Zhonghua later had differences in political opinions, one of them wanted to be Qinwang, and the other wanted to abandon the emperor's revolution with Liang Qichao, so Kang You was quite dissatisfied with this son-in-law.
Despite this, Kang Youwei's love for his children is worthy of recognition.
During his travels in Europe, Kang and Mak traveled thousands of miles across the ocean to Denmark to meet their father. This moved Kang Youwei, and his dissatisfaction with his son-in-law disappeared.
As for Kang Tongbi, family changes and sending people under the fence gave her a new understanding of life. While in Hong Kong, she mastered English, Japanese, French and Italian. When she saw from the newspaper that Kang Youwei was sick and recuperating in India, she was only 18 years old, so she disguised herself as **, crossed the South Seas and found Kang Youwei.
Since then, Kang has studied at Harvard University and Columbia University in the United States. While she was in the United States, she helped Kang Wei expand her career, actively participated in the feminist movement, and became one of the earliest feminist leaders in China.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Kang Tongbi was also elected as a representative of Beijing and was received by ***.
In Kang Tongbi's later years, she devoted herself to sorting out Kang Youwei's articles and materials. In the end, he compiled the "Continuation of the Annals of Mr. Kang of Nanhai" and "The Posthumous Manuscript of Wanmu Thatched Cottage", and these two works have also become important arguments for future generations to study Kang Youwei.
When Kang Youwei was on the run, he took his aunt Liang Suijue with him. Although he was on the run, Kang Youwei relied on fundraising to live a very nourishing life. Therefore, although Liang Suijue accompanied him through the long road of exile, on the one hand, she had no worries about food and clothing, and on the other hand, she increased her knowledge, so she became the most knowledgeable woman in the modern women's world and traveled the most countries.
As for the other aunts, since they all remarried after going into exile, I won't go into detail here.
In short, although Kang Youwei escaped, except for his brother Kang Guangren, his wife and daughters are also safe, and the two daughters are quite promising.
References: "The Biography of Kang Youwei", "Kang Youwei Overseas", etc.).