Newman Huo

AWARD-WINNING writer Xiong Zhaozheng, 54, believes he has the responsibility of writing about Zhang Juzheng, a reformer who lived during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), to enable today’s readers to know that such a great reformer existed in Chinese history.

Xiong, a poet-turned-novelist, was invited by the Chinese-language newspaper Daily Sunshine to give a lecture Thursday about the impact of the reforms carried out by Zhang during the early Wanli period (1573-1620).

“Zhang is one of the three greatest reformers in the feudal society in ancient China, along with Shang Yang of Qin in the Warring States Period (480-221 B.C.) and Wang Anshi of the Song Dynasty (960-1279),” Xiong said. “And his reforms were actually the most successful in ancient Chinese history.”

“Zhang’s policies during the early Wanli period, which were actually economic reforms, have many similarities to the reforms in China today and can provide many lessons for today’s reformers to learn from,” he said.

Xiong spent 10 years on a historical novel about Zhang, which was completed in 2002. The four-volume novel won the Sixth Mao Dun Literary Award, the most prestigious award in Chinese literature, in April 2005.

The award, given to only five authors every four years, was initiated by the Chinese Writers’ Association in 1981 to fulfill the last wish of renowned Chinese writer Mao Dun (1896-1981).

Born in Hubei Province in 1525, Zhang served as head of the Cabinet under Emperor Wanli .

Zhang undertook a series of reforms such as strengthening discipline in officialdom, limiting special privileges, and reclaiming tax-exempt land. He battled corruption while amassing a great deal of power and angering many.

His strong economic reforms are considered to have taken the Ming Dynasty to its peak.

However, soon after his death in Beijing in 1582, Zhang was vilified, his properties were confiscated, he was posthumously stripped of his titles, and even his 80-year-old mother was implicated.

Later, many of his policies were reversed, which slowly led to the disintegration of the dynasty in the years ahead.

“But history played a joke on both Zhang and Emperor Wanli when the emperor’s mausoleum in Beijing and Zhang’s tomb in his hometown in Hubei Province were opened by Red Guards in the same year of 1966 as the ‘Cultural Revolution’ broke out,” Zhang said.

In the emperor’s mausoleum many treasures were found, but in Zhang’s tomb, there were only an inkstone and a plate stating he was prime minister of the Ming court.

“Zhang is an honest, upright and incorruptible reformer, but has been forgotten for about 400 years,” Xiong said.

“As a writer, I have the responsibility of digging Zhang out of the history and letting people today know there was once such a great statesmen who had made a splendid page in the Chinese history of reforms,” Xiong added.

A native of Hubei Province, Xiong published in 1979 a 218-line poem, titled “Put Up Your Forest-like Hands,” which made him famous in Chinese literary circles.

Xiong became the youngest professional member of the Hubei Provincial Writers’ Association in 1981 at 29, and joined the Chinese Writers’ Association in 1984. He graduated from the Chinese department of Wuhan University in 1987.

In 1991, Xiong decided to resign from the provincial writers’ association and became a businessman. He invested 30,000 yuan (US$3,950) in golf courts and real estate.

“I was lucky to make some fortune in business without encountering big failures, but I finally determined to return to my literary career,” Xiong said.

“First of all, it is not so difficult for me to make money; secondly, to make money is not the final goal of my life,” he added.

“What I want to say is that poverty is not the privilege of a writer today,” Xiong said.

“Instead, this period of business experience has enriched my life and made me less prejudiced against society because a writer tends to comment on society based on his own likings if he lacks in social experiences,” he said.

In 1993, while still a businessman, Xiong began to study the history of the Ming Dynasty, and took a special interest in Zhang Juzheng.

“In his economic policies, Zhang had always been trying to put the well-being of common people above everything and let the unprivileged really benefit from reforms,” Xiong said.

“However, bureaucratic officials, rich people and the intellectuals in the Ming and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties didn’t like Zhang, who was doomed to gain no fair comments in the feudal society in ancient China,” he said.

Xiong decided to write a historical novel about Zhang after visiting his tomb in the ancient city of Jingzhou.

Xiong called the historical novel “his own Three Gorges Dam project.” He spent a total of 1 million yuan from 1993 to 2002 on the book.

Xiong said the money was mainly spent on surveys and interviews, photocopies of rare documents and books, and employing assistants.

To get a real feel of the daily life during the Ming Dynasty, Xiong even purchased a lot of furniture and antiques from that time and placed them in his study.

When the four-volume novel was published in 2002, it was well received by both literary critics and common readers in China. They were impressed by the historical truth the novel presented.

Hong Kong-based master of martial-arts novels Louis Cha praised Xiong’s novel, saying that Xiong’s novel had more truth than the renowned overseas Chinese historian Ray Huang’s scholarly work “1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline.”

“Ray Huang is a great historian and he created a new approach to study Chinese history,” Xiong said. “But as I made a deep study of the Ming Dynasty, I found there are some problems in his books that need to be further discussed.”

“Both Louis Cha and I disagree with Huang’s view that the decline of the Ming Dynasty was due to lack of an advanced mode of management,” Xiong added. “Instead, both of us believe that the decline of the Ming Dynasty resulted from the absolute feudal monarchy.”

Xiong said, while writing “Zhang Juzheng,” he had tried his best to put Zhang’s story in the context of the true history of the Ming Dynasty.

“The historical truth of a historical novel must be achieved through three channels, including the truth of historical events, the truth of historical institutions, and the truth of culture, such as customs, way of thinking, and languages,” Xiong said.