Research On Cheng Mengxing

ChengMengxing(1678-1755), was borned in the village of Chenshan of Anhui province.He was one of the successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations in 1712. In 1716, he bought the Xiao Garden as his homeland to take care of his mother, then came back for business. This paper introduces Cheng's history and his discourses in the first section,then describes the relationship between he and the literary world of Yangzhou. After the research of his cultural communicational journey, we analyzed the Cheng's intercourse with the literators. Some famous poet of that time including Li E, Quan Zuwang, Hang Shijun used to visit the Xiao Garden a lot, they were all frends of Cheng. Kong Shangren and Zhao Zhixin were Cheng's old family friends, who also visited him all the time. The salt producer, Ma Yueguan and Ma Yuelu, the best friends of Cheng, were very close to him and would never turn back on him. Business was never mentioned in any of Cheng and his friends' books. The only description about it can be found is the sentence "selling salt" from the book " Local Records of She Xian", which is certainly not clear enough. The third section analyzes the inner connection between Cheng and Zhuang Zhuojiang, who is the charactor from " The Scholars ". Section four focuses on the literary work of Cheng in three parts. The first part studies on Cheng's poem about the nature, while the second part going with his article about history. The third part analyzes Cheng's poems for the paintings and poems about the material world. Best of all, as the love for antiques is always thought to be the most common sign of arty of the archaic merchants from Anhui, we find they did not just purchase them as ornamental furnitures after we study the poems intensivly.