164823

Story 24: Wu Sangui, Chen Yuanyuan and Bi Shipo

Wu Sangui, Chen Yuanyuan and Bi Shipo

Author: Anonymous

There is a steep slope at the western foot of Wuhua Mountain in Kunming, which is called the “slope that forces death”. Who has been killed by this slope?

The original name of forced death slope is “Gezi Slope”. How it got its current name must start with several tragic figures closely related to Kunming. Wu Sangui was the commander-in-chief of Ningyun in the late Ming Dynasty.

He commanded an elite force of 100,000 people and defended Shanhaiguan from the invasion of the Qing army. But when Li Zicheng occupied Beijing and Liu Zongmin kidnapped his concubine Chen Yuanyuan, he in turn colluded with the Qing army to defeat Li Zicheng and occupy a large area of Ming Dynasty land.

It is said that as soon as he heard that Chen Yuanyuan was occupied, he immediately “wept bitterly that all the three armies were in mourning, and became angry for the beauty”. On the surface, he was mourning for Chongzhen, but in fact, in order to avenge the hatred of taking his wife, he vowed to become enemies with Li Zi.

Chen Yuan, formerly known as Chen Yuan, is a native of Suzhou. She is naturally beautiful. After careful education, she is “good at erotic arts”. She has a naturally good voice and is good at rhythm. She is very skilled in calligraphy, chess, piano, and painting.

She is a peerless beauty who is famous in Jiangnan. . At that time, the Ming Dynasty was suffering from internal and external troubles, and Emperor Chongzhen was in a depressed mood. In order to please him, Concubine Tian asked her father Tian Hong to meet Jiangnan to find beautiful women to relieve Chongzhen’s depression. When Tian Hong met Jiangnan, he spent 200,000 taels of silver to pick up Chen Yuanyuan.

Unexpectedly, Emperor Chongzhen was always worried about being a womanizer, and Chen Yuanyuan was quickly returned to Tian’s mansion after entering the palace. In Tianfu, life was miserable and affluent, and Chen Yuanyuan lived in a luxurious environment, singing, dancing and feasting every day. She became more sophisticated in her skills and became famous throughout the city, as a home of the rich and powerful.

When Wu Sangui returned to Beijing, Tian Guozhang wanted to make a close connection with this powerful sect as his future support, and asked Chen Yuanyuan to entertain this martial artist. When Wu Sangui saw Chen Yuanyuan, he suspected that she was immortal and marveled at her talent, so he asked Tian Hongyu for Chen Yuanyuan. Tian was helpless on the one hand, and wanted to rely on Wu Sangui to protect his family and life in troubled times, so he gave Chen Yuanyuan to Wu Sangui.

Wu Sangui was delighted to have Chen Yuanyuan, but the military situation ahead was urgent, so he had no choice but to place Chen Yuanyuan in the capital and return to Shanhaiguan. During this period, Li Zicheng’s army invaded Beijing, and Emperor Chongzhen hanged himself on Meishan.

After Li Zicheng’s army entered Beijing, he was busy recovering stolen money, occupying territory, and preparing to establish a new dynasty. Liu Zongmin arrested Wu Sangui’s father and tortured him. He ransacked Wu’s house and took Chen Yuanyuan away.

After Wu Sangui defeated Li Zicheng, he found Chen Yuanyuan during the pursuit and never dared to ignore him again. Later, Wu Sangui’s power became more and more powerful. After taking office in Yunnan, he started to build a lot of construction projects in Kunming such as Green Lake and Lotus Pond, and enjoyed the scenery with Chen Yuanyuan. Chen Yuanyuan was widely sympathized with by the people, who believed that what happened to her was not caused by her own wishes.

Especially after Wu Sangui later found beauties such as “Sifang Guanyin” and “Eight-faced Guanyin” to be included in the mansion, Chen Yuanyuan retreated to recite Buddha’s name to nourish her heart, let alone be with her.

Wu Sangui was determined, so after Wu Sangui rebelled against the Qing Dynasty, she clearly saw that it would never succeed, and became even more discouraged and moved into a Buddhist nunnery. When the Qing army defeated Wu Sangui’s army and invaded Kunming, Chen Yuanyuan sank into the lotus pond, and a generation of beauties “died away”.

Speaking of which, Wu Sangui betrayed the Ming Dynasty for Chen Yuanyuan, and betrayed the Qing Dynasty because of his desire for power. The most hateful thing he did in Kunming was to kill Emperor Yongli.

Emperor Yongli was the King of Gui of the Ming Dynasty. He was promoted as Emperor Yongli of the Southern Ming Dynasty and led the remaining forces of the Southern Ming Dynasty to resist the Qing Dynasty. However, he was finally defeated by the Qing army and retreated to Kunming. Emperor Yongli was unable to resolve the conflict between the residual Ming forces and the Daxi Army such as Li Dingguo, and was even less able to eliminate the internal struggles within the Daxi Army.

He was unable to defeat the hundreds of thousands of troops followed by Wu Sangui and fled westward into Myanmar. Wu Sangui sent troops to the Burmese border and forced the Burmese king to hand over Emperor Yongli and take him back to Kunming.

After Emperor Yongli and his son were escorted back to Kunming, they were imprisoned in the Jinchan Temple in Gizipotou. In April 1662 AD (the first year of Kangxi), Wu Sangui came to Li Dingguo under the call of Emperor Yongli in order to cut off future troubles and cut off Li Dingguo who still had troops.

He rebelled against the Qing Dynasty, fought against him, and strangled Yongli and his son to death with bowstrings without permission in Jinchan Temple.

The people of Sanyin, Yunnan, sympathized with Emperor Yongli’s plight, despised and resented Wu Sangui’s character, and changed the name “Gezi Slope” to “Forcing Death Slope”. One of them couldn’t bear to say that Emperor Yongli was strangled to death, and the other was about Wu Sangui’s behavior towards his “old master”.

After the forced death slope, it was changed to Shengping slope by the Qing government to avoid history.

The slope is steep and you should walk slowly when you reach the monument.