When he was seven years old, Cui Yan was led by his mother into Yeting.
The day my mother was dragged out wrapped in a ragged mat, she bruised her knees in the snow and learned not to cry from then on. Her father lost his head because of the sentence "A good history should be punished for any crime", leaving her with only a few pages of incomplete manuscripts and one sentence - "It is the duty of a scholar to never forget the kindness of others and not to avoid danger."
It took her four years to go from being a laundry slave in Yeting to being a female official in Zhongcao, from collecting dung buckets in Yongxiang to becoming a female official in Yongning Palace. Others rely on family background, marriage, and luck, but she only relies on one thing: her brain. The account book is her sword, and the court is her chess piece. When checking Yintian, she checked out five years of tax account books one by one; when debating court officials, she did not shout slogans but only presented data. After being scolded as "Sichen", she stood at the door of the Hall of Supreme Harmony and retorted one by one in front of the civil and military officials of the court, leaving everyone speechless.
Empress Dowager Feng said: "At eleven years old, he is better than those old ministers with beards in the Hall of Supreme Harmony."
Hulu Ah Liudun said: "You are different from all the Han people I have met. You are ruthless."
She refused marriage proposal, gave up marriage, and devoted all her energy to reform and female education. Someone asked her if she regretted it. She said: "What I want is not to add fragrance to my red sleeves, but to stand at the top and do what I should do."
She built the first girls' school in the Wei Dynasty in Luoyang, and said to the girls in the hall: "Women can not only give birth to children, but they can also study, work, and serve the country."
From a grass in Yeting to a towering tree in Dawei. She never married and had no children, and only five words were engraved on her tombstone——
Qinghe Cui Yan Qingru.
Intention: How a life that has been stepped into the mud can achieve self-transcendence in the cracks of power with its unyielding character and immortal ideals, and ultimately promote the civilization process of an era - the word "Qingru" is not only a portrayal of her personality, but also a response to how people should live.