From Upright Official To Hero:Memory Construction And Image-building Of Lin Zexu By Then Intellectuals Of Late Qing Dynasty

The paper discusses the process of memory construction and image-building of Lin Zexu by then intellectuals of late Qing Dynasty, with the help of the four writing carriers, namely, public opinion, poetry, legend and biography, aiming to find out the inner force s and limits of the four carriers in the building process. The image of Lin Zexu during the late Qing Dynasty has transferred from being an honest and upright official to a hero. Each of the four carriers, however, has played a different role at different stages and ranges. Public opinion offers a direct impression of then scholars on Lin, whose image has transferred from being an honest official to a hero. Poetry serves as the major channel for people of that time to recognize Lin’s stories, which are carried down and spread out by combining the poems of Lin Zexu with the corpuses of then scholars. Legend is used to build the recognized image of Lin by individual or collective deduction due to the lack of definitive facts. Recognized by many then scholars, the legend goes beyond and becomes part of unofficial history. Biography refers to the judgment made by then scholars about Lin after his passing away. The judgment, however, has not yet set final due to the differences of time and of the position held by then compilers, and it moves towards a positive one. It is these carriers which have been carried on that build the images of Lin Zexu as an honest and upright official and hero. Some defects also appear in the building process due to the carriers’limits:public opinion focuses on simplicity and purity, blurring details; scholars’understanding about Lin’s poems and works is not complete because of limited connection and reading; external aspects have been attached to the legends; the biography is reliable, yet it is not well passed down due to limited spreading channels. The building of image, however, is not dependent on publicity, instead it turns on confining. The scholars’publicity does play a major role in building Lin’s image, the key, however, lies in the relatively free flow of research documents on Lin Zexu. It is under the help of the four carriers that the scholars of the late Qing Dynasty, by combining those documents with their own reading and understanding, have help built the image of Lin Zexu during the late Qing Dynasty, and have also laid the foundation for image-building of the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China.