Xu Zhijing

Biography

Family Background and Early Life Xu Zhijing came from an established family in Yixing, Jiangsu. His father Xu Jiajie, courtesy name Weihou, earned the jinshi degree in 1847, the same year as Li Hongzhang, and the two became close friends. Influenced by the Self-Strengthening movement, Xu Jiajie advocated building railways and introducing smallpox vaccination. He was friendly with the British missionary Timothy Richard and often asked him how Britain had become wealthy and powerful. He educated his sons to study Chinese history closely while also learning foreign history. From childhood Xu Zhijing therefore studied the classics and history while paying attention to Western affairs and practical statecraft. Xu passed the provincial examination in 1873 and earned the jinshi degree in the 1876 special examination. He was selected as a shujishi and, after the Hanlin evaluation, appointed compiler. He later rose through posts in the Left and Right Spring Chambers, served as Left Secretariat Supervisor, in posts for the heir apparent, and as diarist for the daily lectures, eventually becoming Hanlin lecturer-in-waiting and reader-in-waiting. His eldest son Xu Renzhu and second son Xu Renjing also entered the Hanlin Academy, and the family was known as the “father and two sons, three Hanlin academicians.” Xu was diligent in learning, upright in character, “incorruptible, quiet, and sparing in desire,” skilled in traditional medicine, and fond of singing Kunqu opera. ### Turn toward Reform after the Sino-Japanese War In 1895 Xu’s father died, and Xu returned to Yixing to observe mourning for twenty-seven months. During this period he witnessed repeated foreign encroachment and widespread official corruption and was deeply angered. He often said that only the emergence of several men like Zhang Juzheng and Hai Rui could reverse the situation, and for a time he considered not returning to office. His uncle Xu Qiquan urged him that, as a Hanlin reader-in-waiting entitled to submit individual memorials, “at a time when the state is in danger, you should accomplish something; how can you grow weary of service?” In 1897 Germany occupied Jiaozhou Bay. With foreign pressure increasingly urgent, Xu sought “reform for national survival.” He agreed with Kang Youwei’s advocacy of constitutional monarchy modeled on the Meiji Restoration in Japan and argued that “if one wishes to reform, one must widely seek men of profound practical learning and broad knowledge of current affairs and employ them; only then can old habits be changed and new patterns established.” ### Key Role in the Hundred Days’ Reform On June 8, 1898, while serving as a Hanlin reader-in-waiting, Xu submitted the “Memorial on Clearly Stating Whether to Preserve the Old or Open the New,” better known as the “Memorial Requesting a Clear Determination of National Policy.” He argued that foreign pressure was deepening, national policy remained unsettled, and neither innovation nor conservatism had a firm basis; he therefore asked the emperor to issue a decisive statement to unify opinion and sustain the political situation. Three days later the Guangxu Emperor issued the Edict on the Determination of National Policy, announcing a program of reform and strengthening. On June 13 Xu submitted the “Confidential Memorial Recommending Talented Men,” recommending Kang Youwei, then a principal secretary in the Ministry of Works; Huang Zunxian, circuit intendant responsible for the salt administration in Hunan; Tan Sitong, a reserve prefect of Jiangsu; Zhang Yuanji, a principal secretary in the Ministry of Justice; and Guangdong provincial graduate Liang Qichao. Xu proposed that they be “placed near the throne to provide consultation, or advanced into the government to plan the new policies.” The Guangxu Emperor issued an order that same day preparing to receive Kang Youwei and Zhang Yuanji three days later. Xu’s recommendation was an important factor in enabling Kang, Tan, and others to participate directly in the new policies. During the subsequent Hundred Days’ Reform, Xu submitted at least seven additional important memorials. These included a June 22 memorial requesting abolition of the eight-legged essay; the July 7 “Memorial Requesting Appropriate Determination of the Essay Forms for Policy Questions in the Examinations”; an August 14 memorial requesting creation of a translation and compilation bureau; a September 5 memorial concerning the placement of unattached high officials; a September 11 memorial recommending Yuan Shikai; and a September 14 memorial recommending talented men. In September Xu was promoted to Right Vice Minister of Rites. ### Coup, Imprisonment, and Escape from Execution On September 21, 1898, the Coup of 1898 occurred. Empress Dowager Cixi confined the Guangxu Emperor and launched large-scale arrests of reformist officials. On September 24, when the office of the commander of the Nine Gates came to Xu’s residence to arrest him, he was away. On returning home, he voluntarily went to the Ministry of Justice to surrender and showed no panic. He was initially sentenced to immediate execution, and according to the source Xu was the first person whom Cixi personally ordered to be executed at once. Li Hongzhang and Xu’s father Xu Jiajie had been jinshi classmates and close friends. Li therefore tried to save Xu and asked Ronglu, a favored official of Cixi, to intercede. Ronglu argued that Xu was merely a bookish scholar who did not understand the new policies, that he had only sung Kunqu opera and played go among the reformers, and that in the three months after the reform was announced the emperor had not once granted him an audience. Cixi sent eunuchs to verify the matter, and it was confirmed that the Guangxu Emperor had indeed not summoned Xu during those three months. Together with Ronglu’s favored position, this led Cixi to commute Xu’s sentence to death by strangulation after review. The reason the Guangxu Emperor had not summoned Xu, according to the source, was that Xu was hard of hearing in both ears, while Cixi had informants around the emperor, making confidential conversation impractical. On September 28 Xu learned that a group of prisoners was to be executed. He put on his official robes and waited to be taken out, while his sons and nephews prepared a coffin at Caishikou. The first prison cart instead carried Tan Sitong, followed by Yang Shenxiu, Yang Rui, Lin Xu, Liu Guangdi, and Kang Guangren. The Six Gentlemen were executed, while Xu survived because of his commuted sentence. The “Seven Gentlemen of 1898” thereby became remembered as the “Six Gentlemen.” ### Years in Prison and Later Life After entering prison Xu believed he would certainly die. Having survived, he read and cultivated himself in confinement and did not regret participating in the reform movement. He told his niece’s husband Yan Jianbo during a prison visit: “We advocated institutional reform and modeled ourselves on the Meiji Restoration. One may say the medicine matched the illness. Although we did not succeed, I believe this road will still have to be taken in the future. It is the general trend and cannot be stopped by a few people.” In prison he composed in his mind a “Funeral Address for the Six Gentlemen” and a “Continuation of the Song of Righteousness.” During two years in confinement, his skill in traditional medicine enabled him to treat fellow prisoners and save many lives. In 1900, when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing, the Ministry of Justice prison was left unattended and all prisoners were released. Xu refused to leave, saying: “I am a convicted official of the Great Qing. I was sentenced to strangulation after review. Now foreigners have opened the prison and released the prisoners; I cannot obey their command.” He did not leave until food service in the prison stopped, after which he asked Minister of Justice Guiheng to submit an imperial request on his behalf. On January 22, 1901, an imperial rescript ordered that he “be released together with the others by special grace and exempted from punishment.” Xu left Beijing and settled in Yaoyuansi Lane in Hangzhou, taking the art name Jinsou, meaning the old man who alone survived after the Six Gentlemen were killed. Yan Xiu and Henan gentry proposed restoring Xu’s official status, but he politely refused and said he would no longer serve “the Nara woman,” referring to Cixi. After the Qing fell and the Republic was established, he immediately cut off his queue and required his sons, nephews, and grandsons to do the same. He regarded Kang Youwei’s later restorationist activity as acting against the course of history. Kang visited him in Hangzhou in the spring of 1914 and summer of 1916, and Liang Qichao also visited. In 1916, when Xu learned of Yuan Shikai’s death, his entire family gathered in celebration and he hoped a genuine republican polity would be established. In 1917 he wrote to urge Kang not to participate in a restoration of the Xuantong Emperor. Xu died of illness in Hangzhou in 1918. Kang Youwei wrote poems and prose in mourning and composed a long elegiac couplet praising Xu as the first man of the 1898 reform movement, a man who forgot his household for the state, remained loyal to his ruler, urgently sought talent, and hated wrongdoing, while lamenting that Kang himself had been unable to repay Xu’s favor during his lifetime or attend his funeral after death.

Family, His Father's Friendship with Li Hongzhang, and His Early Career

Xu Zhijing, styled Zijing and in late life called Jinsou, passed the provincial examination in 1873 and the metropolitan examination in 1876, was chosen a bachelor of the Hanlin academy, made a compiler, and rose to expositor of the Hanlin academy, to grand secretary of the Grand Secretariat and acting vice-minister of rites. His father Xu Jiajie, styled Weihou, took his degree in 1847 in the same list as Li Hongzhang, and the two were close friends. Xu Jiajie, influenced by the self-strengthening party, advocated railways and vaccination, was a friend of the British missionary Timothy Richard and often sought his advice on the sources of England's wealth and power, and brought his sons up to study Chinese history with foreign history besides; and Xu Zhijing, taught by his father from childhood, attended not only to the classics and histories but to Western affairs and statecraft. There is also a story of the two families unknown to outsiders: when they sat the examination together Li Hongzhang fell ill with malaria and could not finish his essays, and Xu Jiajie, visiting him in the next cell, heard him lament that the examination was lost; asked how many essays he had done, Li said that only one had been fair-copied and two were rough drafts, with no time to revise before his illness, and that his hand trembled so that he could not finish them; and Xu Jiajie said to give them to him and he would arrange and copy them and hand them in on trial. Li Hongzhang passed in that list, and though he afterwards rose to the heights of the empire while Xu Jiajie remained only a magistrate, the tie between the families was extraordinary. Xu Zhijing afterwards moved through the offices of the left and right of the household of the heir apparent, the left and right secretaries of the heir apparent's household, the diarist of the imperial presence, and rose to expositor and reader of the Hanlin academy; and he and his eldest son Xu Renzhu and second son Xu Renjing were all in the Hanlin at once, which men of the day called the three Hanlins of one father and sons. He was diligent and studious all his life, upright, "pure, quiet and of few desires," skilled in Chinese medicine and fond of singing Kunqu opera.

His Mourning after 1895, His Change of Mind, and His Turn to Reform

In 1895 Xu Zhijing's father died and he went home to Yixing to keep mourning for twenty-seven months. In that time, seeing foreign aggression frequent and the officials greedy and corrupt, he was full of anger and often said that unless a few Zhang Jiangling (Zhang Juzheng) and Hai Gangfeng (Hai Rui) appeared the temper could not be changed, and he thought once more of not taking office; but his uncle Xu Qiquan told him that as reader of the Hanlin academy he might memorialize on his own account and that "in a time of crisis for the state a man should build something, and may not grow weary of service," and he gave up the thought of retiring. In 1897, when Germany seized Jiaozhou bay, Xu Zhijing, with foreign danger pressing, thought urgently of "reform to preserve the state," and agreeing with Kang Youwei's constitutional monarchy and the model of the Meiji restoration, held that "if reform is intended, men of deep and solid learning and wide knowledge of the times must be sought out and employed, and only then can old habits be changed and the new model be completed." On the eighth day of the sixth month of 1898 he memorialized as reader of the Hanlin academy with the "Memorial on the Old and the New, Praying for a Clear Declaration of What Is to Be Followed," the famous memorial asking that the direction of the state be fixed, saying that "the foreign insult is deep and the direction of the state unsettled, so that neither the new nor the old has anything to stand on, and we beg that your majesty decide and proclaim it, to unite men's minds and sustain the situation"; and three days later the emperor Guangxu issued the edict fixing the direction of the state and proclaiming reform. On the thirteenth day he memorialized secretly recommending men of talent, naming the secretary of works Kang Youwei, the salt commissioner of Hunan Huang Zunxian, the expectant prefect of Jiangsu Tan Sitong, the secretary of justice Zhang Yuanji and the Guangdong graduate Liang Qichao, proposing that they be "either kept at your majesty's side for consultation or brought into the government to plan the new measures"; and the emperor decreed the same day that Kang Youwei and Zhang Yuanji be received three days later. That Kang and Tan and the rest could take direct part in the new measures was largely Xu Zhijing's doing. In the hundred days that followed he sent up at least seven more important memorials — on abolishing the eight-legged essay on the twenty-second of the sixth month, on fixing the style of the policy essays in the various examinations on the seventh of the seventh month, on opening a compilation bureau on the fourteenth of the eighth month, on appointing the dispersed ministers on the fifth of the ninth month, on recommending Yuan Shikai on the eleventh, and further recommendations of talent on the fourteenth — dealing with the examination system, style, compilation offices, the structure of office, the training of a strong army and the defence of the frontier; and in the ninth month he was raised to be vice-minister of rites of the right.

His Surrender to Justice, His Rescue, and the "Six Gentlemen"

On the twenty-first day of the ninth month of 1898 the coup took place: the empress dowager Cixi confined the emperor Guangxu and arrested the reforming officials wholesale. On the twenty-fourth, when the office of the nine gates came to seize him, Xu Zhijing was out, and on returning he went of his own accord to the ministry of justice and gave himself up, showing no panic. The sentence was immediate decapitation, and the first name on the empress dowager's own list for immediate execution was his; and in prison, thinking himself certain to die, he heard on the twenty-eighth that a batch was to be executed, put on his official dress and waited to set out, while his nephews prepared a coffin at the Caishikou. His nephew Xu Renlu, going to meet Xu Renzhu coming north from Changsha, was struck dumb with the news, and only his nephew Xu Renquan reached the execution ground: there he saw a dense crowd saying that the first cart must be Xu Zhijing's; and suddenly the cannon sounded, a column poured out of the Shunzhi gate, and men cried that the executioners had come, and then that it was strange that the first to be beheaded was Lord Tan. Xu Renquan took up Tan Sitong's body; the crowd dispersed, and no uncle had been brought out, so he left the coffin in the shop, went home and found Xu Renjing still standing speechless at the gate, and pulled him inside and told him there was nothing today. The first cart was indeed Tan Sitong, then Yang Shenxiu, Yang Rui, Lin Xu, Liu Guangdi and Kang Guangren; the six gentlemen died, and Xu Zhijing escaped by the commutation, so that "the seven gentlemen of 1898" became "the six." The case was irregular in procedure as well: the ministry of justice did not dare try it and asked that ministers be appointed to sit jointly, and then an order for beheading came suddenly, over the heads of every legal procedure, so that the officers of the ministry were astonished that "the laws of the Great Qing were not even regarded before a man was killed."

The decisive man in saving him was Li Hongzhang. Li and Xu Zhijing's father being of the same list and close friends, on the day of the arrest Li paced his courtyard and at last resolved to ask Cixi's favourite Rong Lu for help, saying that his nephew of the year Xu Zijing was a bookworm fond of Kunqu who did not understand the new measures at all, and that Rong Lu should put in a word; and when Rong Lu objected that Xu was a principal criminal, Li charged him repeatedly to "save his life." The next day Rong Lu saw Cixi, and seeing the list of sentences with Xu's name first for immediate beheading and Tan Sitong and the rest below, he said that the empress dowager was wise and these men deserved their fate, but that Xu Zhijing was said to be a bookworm who sang Kunqu and played the flute at home all day and did not understand the new measures and had perhaps been taken in; at which Cixi said in anger that Xu Zhijing was no good, that he had set mother and son against each other, and asked why Rong Lu shielded him; and Rong Lu knelt and said that he would not dare, but that so far as he knew, after Xu Zhijing's promotion the emperor had not received him. Cixi at once sent eunuchs to search the records, which, since the palace required every imperial audience to be recorded, could be checked at once; and the eunuchs reported that the emperor had indeed not received Xu Zhijing in three months, at which her expression softened and she told Rong Lu that for his sake the man should grow old at the bottom of a prison, and changed the words "immediate beheading" with her own brush to "imprisonment awaiting the cord," that is, a suspended death sentence. Rong Lu, to show how hard he had worked to save Xu's life, told Li Hongzhang the whole story, and it was told by Li's descendants to Xu's. The reason the emperor had not received Xu Zhijing for three months was in fact his deafness, since unless a man raised his voice Xu could not hear him clearly, and the emperor's attendants being always among Cixi's listeners, audiences were avoided for secrecy.

His Years in Prison, His Refusal to Leave It, and His Last Years

Having escaped death, Xu Zhijing read and cultivated himself in prison and did not regret his part in the reform. To his niece's husband, Yan Jianbo, who came to visit him, he said that they had stood for reform of the system after the Meiji model, which was to prescribe the right medicine for the disease, and that though it had failed he believed the road would still be taken, for it was the tendency of the times and could not be blocked by a minority. In prison the drafts of his "Sacrifice to the Six Gentlemen" and "Continuation of the Song of Righteous Spirit" were composed in his head and written out only after he settled in Hangzhou; and in his two years there he, being skilled in medicine, often treated the prisoners and saved many. In 1900, when the allied armies entered Beijing and the prison of the ministry of justice was left unguarded and all the prisoners released, Xu Zhijing refused to leave, saying that he was a convicted official of the Great Qing sentenced to imprisonment awaiting the cord and could not obey the orders of foreigners who opened the prison; and he waited until the prison stopped serving food, when he came out, brought out by Xu Renjing, and asked the minister of justice Gui Heng to memorialize for an order, receiving two months later the edict of pardon from Xi'an and then going south by sea from Tianjin. By then his eldest son Xu Renzhu, after the failure of 1898 and the death of his mother, had brought the coffin south and died of consumption, so that father and son never met, and someone made a couplet on it about the unfilial son Xu Renzhu whose guilt was so heavy that he had not destroyed himself but brought calamity on his father, and the presumptuous subject Xu Zhijing, a student of no account, who knew no caution and offended against the imperial majesty. Leaving the capital, Xu Zhijing settled in the Yao garden temple lane at Hangzhou and called himself Jinsou, meaning the old man left alive under the knife when the six gentlemen were killed, and in his last years he often said that he should have gone with them and that there was no point in his being left. Yan Xiu and the gentry of Henan plotted to have his offices restored, and he declined politely, saying that he would serve that Nara woman no more; and when the Qing fell and the republic was founded he cut off his queue at once and required his sons, nephews and grandsons to do the same, holding that the restoration attempts of Kang Youwei and the others went against the tide of history. Kang Youwei visited him at Hangzhou twice, in the spring of 1914 and the summer of 1916, and Liang Qichao also came; in 1916, on hearing of Yuan Shikai's death, he gathered his household in rejoicing, hoping for a true republic; and in 1917 he wrote to dissuade Kang Youwei from joining the restoration of Xuantong. In 1918 he died at Hangzhou, and Kang Youwei wrote poems and a prose lament for him and a couplet: "In the reform of 1898 you were the first man of the new measures, forgetting house for the state, loyally giving your body for your lord, eager for talent as for thirst, hating evil as an enemy — and the grey heaven has not spared this one old man; in recommending the worthy you caused me to be held two years in the imperial prison, above of no use to the state, below of no help to the people, in life not requiting your kindness, in death not attending your funeral, alone and full of sorrow, for ever your debtor." He wrote a gazetteer of Shangyu, memorials and several volumes of the poems and prose of Jinsou, and his Explanation of the Analects was left unfinished, all kept in the family; and it is recorded that when he held office and was ordered to recommend talent he drew up a list of thirty-one names.

Major Activities

Literary Contributions Xu was diligent in scholarship throughout his life. His writings included the Gazetteer of Shangyu County, several juan of memorials, and several juan of Poetry and Prose of Jinsou. His Explanation of the Analects was left unfinished; the works remained in family possession. The “Funeral Address for the Six Gentlemen” and “Continuation of the Song of Righteousness,” composed while he was imprisoned, were important works of his later years and expressed his commitment to reform and mourning for the executed reformers. ### Political Activity Xu was a key promoter of the Hundred Days’ Reform. On June 8, 1898, he submitted the “Memorial Requesting a Clear Determination of National Policy,” which directly contributed to the Guangxu Emperor’s issuance of the Edict on the Determination of National Policy on June 11. On June 13 he submitted the “Confidential Memorial Recommending Talented Men,” recommending Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Tan Sitong, Huang Zunxian, and Zhang Yuanji and helping bring reformist talent into the central government. He then submitted at least seven further memorials concerning abolition of the eight-legged essay, replacing it with policy essays, eliminating redundant offices, arranging unattached high officials, and strengthening frontier military preparedness, materially influencing the reform program. ### Travels and Residences Xu’s movements were concentrated mainly between Beijing and Hangzhou. He studied and served in Beijing during the earlier part of his life. In 1895 he returned to Yixing to observe twenty-seven months of mourning for his father. After his pardon in 1901 he settled in Yaoyuansi Lane, Hangzhou, and remained there until his death. Kang Youwei visited him in Hangzhou twice, in 1914 and 1916, and Liang Qichao also visited. ### Contacts with Contemporaries Xu had deep connections with Li Hongzhang’s family. His father Xu Jiajie and Li Hongzhang earned the jinshi degree in the same 1847 examination, and after the Coup of 1898 Li made major efforts to save Xu, using Ronglu to petition Cixi and secure commutation from immediate execution to strangulation after review. Xu also had close relations with Kang Youwei. Kang’s own chronology states that after moving the reform association from Jinding Temple to Shangxiejie he lived opposite the Xu residence and visited day and night; despite his age, Xu was eager to learn and even asked Kang to explain the Spring and Autumn Annals while he listened from a side seat, something Kang called nearly unparalleled in recent times. Xu’s son Xu Renzhu worked closely in Hunan with Liang Qichao, Tan Sitong, and Huang Zunxian and was especially congenial with them.

The Political Order of His Memorials, His Relations with Kang and Liang, and His Place in the History of 1898

Xu Zhijing's memorials of 1898 were not scattered advice but followed a clear order. The first step was to fix the direction of the state: the memorial of the eighth day of the sixth month reduced the question to the depth of the foreign insult and the unsettled direction of the state, so that neither the new nor the old had anything to stand on, and asked the emperor to decide and proclaim it, which brought about the edict three days later. The second step was to bring in men of talent: the memorial of the thirteenth day named Kang Youwei, Huang Zunxian, Tan Sitong, Zhang Yuanji and Liang Qichao and offered two ways of placing them — at the emperor's side for consultation, or in the government to plan the new measures — so that the reformers could pass from outside the system into the centre. The third step was to change institutions: the memorials that followed on abolishing the eight-legged essay, on the style of the policy essays, on opening a compilation bureau and on appointing dispersed ministers dealt with the examinations, literary style, compilation and the structure of office. The fourth was the defence of the frontier, in the recommendation of Yuan Shikai and the proposal to train a strong army. This order answers to his argument that "if reform is intended, men of deep and solid learning and wide knowledge of the times must be sought out and employed, and only then can old habits be changed," and shows that he took the employment of men as the precondition of reform rather than its result.

As to his relations with men, his intercourse with Kang Youwei is recorded directly in Kang's own chronological autobiography: that having moved from the Jinding temple to Shangxie lane for the meetings, he and Xu's house faced one another and they saw each other daily, and that "old as he was, Lord Xu loved learning, and even asked me to expound the Spring and Autumn to him, sitting at the side to listen, which is hardly to be found in recent ages." This agrees with his passage before 1898 from statecraft to constitutional monarchy; and his opposition after the revolution to Kang Youwei's restoration projects, and his letter of 1917 dissuading him from joining the restoration of Xuantong, show that his adherence to constitutional monarchy did not amount to support for restoring the Qing. His place in the history of 1898 is peculiar: his office was higher than that of the four ministers of the capital, he had recommended Kang, Liang and Tan and sent up many memorials of reform, and after arrest he was sentenced to immediate beheading, escaping only because Li Hongzhang asked Rong Lu to plead and Cixi's search of the records confirmed that the emperor had not received him for three months, so that the sentence was commuted to imprisonment awaiting the cord; and like Zhang Yinhuan he thus escaped the execution ground at Caishikou while his name was less celebrated than those of the six gentlemen who died. Kang Youwei's couplet, calling him the first man of the reform and saying that his recommendation of talent was why Kang himself was held two years in prison, has precisely his memorials and his recommendation in view; and his writing out of the "Sacrifice to the Six Gentlemen" and "Continuation of the Song of Righteous Spirit" in prison, his taking the name Jinsou, and his refusal ever to take office again provide a note on that place. To regard him merely as a supernumerary prisoner of the coup would therefore be both incomplete and insufficient to explain the actual part his memorials played at the outset of the reform.

Personal Relations

• Eldest son: Xu Renzhu, compiler of the Hanlin Academy; second son: Xu Renjing, Hanlin academician; father and sons all entered the Hanlin, known at the time as "three Hanlin of one family".
• Reform associates: Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and Tan Sitong, fellow leaders of the 1898 reform movement.
• Saviours: Li Hongzhang and Ronglu, who after the coup pleaded successfully to spare him from execution.
• Fellow defendants: the Six Gentlemen of 1898, all of whom were executed, Xu alone being spared.

Historical Assessment

Qing / Contemporary Assessments Kang Youwei’s elegiac couplet called Xu the “first man of the reform movement,” praising him for forgetting his family for the state, remaining loyal to his ruler, eagerly seeking talent, and hating wrongdoing, while expressing Kang’s lifelong regret that he could not repay Xu’s favor. Hu Sijing’s Record of Frost underfoot in 1898 recorded Xu’s confidential memorial recommending Liang Qichao, Tan Sitong, Kang Youwei, and Huang Zunxian and the requests of Xu’s son that his father recommend them at court, affirming Xu’s key role in promoting reformist talent. Xu Jichuan’s Seventy Years of Things Seen and Heard described in detail the day of execution at Caishikou, including the Xu family’s preparation of a coffin, showing how strongly contemporaries expected Xu to die and how deeply he was implicated in the case. ### Song and Yuan Periods This section does not apply to a Qing figure. ### Ming and Qing Periods This section does not apply to a Qing figure. ### Modern Assessments Historian Tang Zhijun, a specialist in the Hundred Days’ Reform, has argued that Xu’s “Memorial Requesting a Clear Determination of National Policy” was probably drafted by Kang Youwei and revised by Xu. In addition to Kang’s own chronology, Liang Qichao’s letter to Xia Zengyou also mentioned the matter, supporting Xu’s practical role in the reform. Later commentators have noted that because Xu Zhijing and Zhang Yinhuan survived the Caishikou executions, their historical fame never matched that of the Six Gentlemen who died, but that history should not forget them. Xu was described as the “seventh gentleman” beyond the Six, having become involved in the reform earlier and more deeply than most. Xu often said in old age: “I should have gone together with the Six Gentlemen. What meaning was there in leaving me behind?” The remark reflected his continuing commitment to the reform cause and his deep mourning for those who died.