He Yan's mother is a beauty. Although her husband died and brought an eldest son, Cao Cao, who was the "meritocracy" and married his wife, still married her back and loved her very much. The son is generally like a mother, not surprisingly, He Yan is a handsome guy. His face is as white as powder, and even when he walks near the water, he will look at his reflection in the water and admire it.

Originally, it was a very popular thing to be good and white in the Wei and Jin dynasties, but He Yan's reputation in history was extremely poor: when he was young, he participated in illegal gatherings of literary youth to spread anti-government remarks, and was imprisoned by his nephew, Emperor Wei Ming, and was not allowed to be an official. finally boiled Emperor Wei Ming to death, Cao Shuang came to power, and He Yan was reinstated, but he engaged in cronyism, gangs, and retaliation in the position of the head of the organization. After Cao Shuang fell, He Yan stabbed him twice, slapping Sima Yi's ass in the face. Gao Pingling coup d'état, Sima Yi seized power, Cao Shuang was ambushed, and Sima Yi asked He Yan to govern Cao Shuang's party crimes. He Yan did his best to clear the wilderness and pulled out a bunch of people, but Sima Yi always said that there was one less. He Yan was ashamed and timid, and asked tremblingly, could it be me? Sima Yi nodded. When future generations read this paragraph, it seemed that He Yan's obscenity was also stuck to the page, and they couldn't wait to wrinkle their noses and shake off the book, rub their fingers, and shout, disgusting to death.

Historian Will Durant said that history, for the most part, is speculation, and the rest is prejudice. The value judgment of a historian is like the sharpest scissors, cutting out the shape of a person's intricate encounters that best suits his likes and dislikes.

Suppose that if we change the "law", there is another He Yan: a famous philosopher, a sincere friend, and a political reformer who has been pushed to the forefront.

He Yan once commented on the Analects. Throughout the ages, there must have been more annotations to the Analects than in the novels, and even if they were thrown into the Yangtze River, the river would probably have to rise several meters. It's just that now, in Liu Baonan's "Analects of Justice", which has compiled the annotations of various families, it must be said how He Yan's "Analects of the Analects" is said.

Originally, we should also be able to see He Yan's annotated "Lao Tzu", he is looking forward to his book, after all, the article is eternal. However, an unintentional visit from his young and talented friend Wang Bi put an end to this possibility. The first acquaintance between Wang Bi and He Yan was very typical of the Wei and Jin dynasties, when Wang Bi was a little-known teenager, and He Yan was a middle-aged relative of the emperor and the head of the organization of the ruling and opposition. But the door of He Yan's house is open every day for talented people.

At that time, He Yan was refereeing a debate, and Wang Bi happened to come in. There was no greeting, He Yan split his head and asked, I think this truth has been discussed clearly, and it can't go any further, what do you say? Wang Bi didn't answer him, just sat down and elaborated on the argument just now. Just as the seats were about to applaud, Wang Bi began to refute his argument just now. After fighting each other several times, the house was overwhelmed.

He Yan was very excited, and since then Wang Bi has become a good friend of his.

could have become a good story of a year-old friend, but Wang Bi wanted to grab business with He Yan: Wang Bi also commented on "Lao Tzu". And when the genius was born, the genius became nothing like dust on the road. When He Yan saw this book, his heart was cold, and he tasted despair for the first time. Wang Bi's commentary uses a theory of "nothingness" to connect Laozi and Confucianism, completing the connection between ontology and the sensible world. In Hegel's words, it is a "road of descent down". Chinese philosophy has never been much about ontology, and although Wang Bi's theory may only be on par with the pre-Platonic era, it is the only epoch-making theory in China. And He Yan sadly found that the annotations he had worked hard for half his life were actually just a peep at the leopard and a blind man touching the elephant.

It is not a piece of cake for He Yan, the big man of the dynasty and the secretary of the ministry, to take Wang Bi's article for himself, or even kill him! Anyway, there was no copyright in ancient times! What's more, the literary world is like a battlefield, slandering and slandering, and secretly killing an opponent, and cultural people are still very handy at playing. It's just that this solid-eyed He Yan actually burned his book. He was only willing to sign the best with his own name, and if it was destined to be an inferior work, he would rather no one had ever seen it.

Respect is He Yan's belief, and it is also the belief of the entire Wei Jin Shi community. Self-esteem and respect for others, whether it is the little-known Wang Bi or the world-famous Xiahou Xuan who has already been in academic debates with him, for He Yan, they are all equal, no matter how the other party's arguments provoke him, academic debates can only be persuaded by reason, and other means should not even be considered.

He Yan received a famous fortune teller, who was in charge. At that time, He Yan was almost defeated, and when he heard that Guan Yan was good at interpreting dreams, he asked him, I dreamed that dozens of flies stopped on my nose, and I couldn't wave them away. The pipe said disdainfully, the nose is a mountain in the sky, and now the flies are parked on the mountain, which means that the high-ranking people will be subverted, and the light-hearted people will be finished, you have to be careful to be a man. This is tantamount to cursing He Yan to death, Deng Yang, who was also present at the time, became furious when he heard it, and said, you are! He Yan stopped Deng Yang and politely asked him to come back next year. He didn't have any grudges, and then he discussed philosophical issues with Guan Zhen several times.

He Yan's respect for others almost opened the style of the Wei and Jin dynasties. So you saw the teenage Wang Rong participating in a debate with his father's generation Ruan Ji and Ji Kang, and saw Yin Zhongkan taking the important meal monk Kang Seng Yuan, who was good at talking, as a guest. In this era of paying the most attention to the family, but it is also the era that lacks the most secular threshold, rationality has become the yardstick for judging everything, and reason is not afraid of youth and poverty.

And He Yan's respect comes from his pride - if I can't defeat you in reason, I can still smile and tell you that I lost. For later generations, this may be called humility, but for He Yan, this is a kind of loneliness, because of the arrogance of loneliness.

He Yan's loneliness may be unbearable, but more often it comes from the sensitivity of his youth and the extreme self-esteem caused by too much inferiority, he always wants to be the best, whether it is academic or human.

When he was a child, He Yan, as Cao Cao's "fake son", was mixed up with Cao Zhi and Cao Pi's group of genuine sons, and frequently participated in Cao Cao's public money eating and drinking. For Cao Pi and them, it is natural for a father to make money and spend on his son, but here in He Yan, it is like a food that comes to him, and he enjoys wealth by relying on his mother's beauty, which is very unjustifiable. The young man's premature self-esteem made him sit on pins and needles, and rejected Cao Cao's proposal to recognize him as a real son, but he wanted to show his excellence even more, win back a little dignity for himself, and prove that he was talented, ambitious, and had opportunities, and he didn't need to rely on his mother to get status.

But He Yan's idea was completely wrong. Excellence is sometimes just an accessory to status, it is the icing on the cake for those who are in a high position, and it is a death for those whose lives are thinner than paper. Therefore, Lao Tzu said to be kind and gentle, to pretend, to "know its white, keep its black", and seventy percent should pretend to be only one percent. He Yan, who is young, beautiful and has excess self-esteem, doesn't understand, but can't bear it.

There is no suspense, and the result of being strong is often humiliating. Just like Zhang Ailing wrote in "Love in a Fallen City", the white tassel that was returned to her parents' house was always dressed up the most dazzling at the ball, so she was hated by her sisters, and He Yan's excellence was also boycotted by Cao Pi.

Cao Pi is a bit of a son's temper, but He Yan always competes with him everywhere, so Cao Pi often rolls his eyes, nods his chin contemptuously, and calls He Yan to "drag the oil bottle", and after becoming the emperor, he doesn't want to pay attention to him. Fortunately, in the Cao Pi era, all the Cao brothers were not allowed to see, and the grievances suffered by He Yan were not so obvious.

But in the hands of Cao Pi's son Cao Ei, He Yan was even more humiliated that was not commensurate with his seniority: Cao Rong heard that He Yan was white, some people said that he was born, and some people said that he was dusty every day, artificial. So Cao Rong invited He Yan to drink spicy soup and eat steamed buns on a hot day, and He Yan sweated profusely. When He Yan wiped his sweat, Cao Rong stared at his face vigorously without blinking. However, He Yan calmly wiped his sweat, and his face slowly revealed a carmine color as bright as the moon.

Although the age difference is not much, Cao Rong is blatantly teasing his uncle. The pearl jade is a national treasure above the temple, but it is only a prop for "blood-colored Luo skirt turning wine stains" in the Fengyue Field. Therefore, Confucius said that "if the name is not right, the word is not good", and talent and beauty in an embarrassing situation are sometimes more likely to provoke insults than mediocrity.

Although he occasionally teased the elders, in general, Cao Rong was not bad-hearted: he gave He Yan a vacancy as a concubine (He Yan married Cao Lin's sister Princess Jinxiang as his wife), and his main job was only to make poems and songs to praise the peaceful and prosperous times. Although He Yan was not able to give full play to his talent in this position, he did his job well. The "Gyeongbok Dian Fu" written by him during this period has been handed down to this day.

But in the end, he was unwilling. In his early twenties, he is strong in blood, and for talented people, the whole world can step under his feet. What's more, the actions of the two generations of kings were touched, and the country in the era of Emperor Wei Ming was prone to earthquakes and solar eclipses, and it was not peaceful, He Yan could not suppress his desire to save the people and get ahead. Coupled with the fact that Cao Rong basically followed his father's set of people, for young people like He Yan, the conservative aging of the rulers is undoubtedly the biggest reason for political reform.

But he doesn't have any power. A Guan Neihou who relied on nepotism didn't work at all, so he naturally hit it off with the young people who were determined to reform, meeting every day, and complaining every day about the people in power in the court who wielded the stick of etiquette. Young people are always used to sneering at their predecessors, and no matter how trendy the previous generation was, in the eyes of this generation, they are all old and stubborn. These young people include Xiahou Xuan, Xun Cang, and Deng Yang, all of whom are cultural people, and they are all young people who have absorbed the new trend of thinking of advocating nature and freedom of behavior. They talked about talents from current politics, discussed the criteria for selecting talents, and accused the bigwigs of the current dynasty for lacking "qualifications" without naming them.

There is nothing new under the sun, and the "civil political groups" that were a headache for the government in the late Han Dynasty have been revived. In the era when cultural people were too free, there were many ideas and demagoguery, and the topic of discussion was always not good enough from the current government. Helpless, if you don't suppress it, you have to put out the fire everywhere, Cao Rong has the iron fist of the Legalist, and in the name of "flashy rendezvous", he drove all these people out of the court, and he didn't have to do anything else.

The political enthusiasm that was finally ignited was pinched clean like a cigarette butt by Cao Rong, and He Yan was not depressed. People are political animals, and the influence of the late Eastern Han Dynasty and the exposure of his youth gave him an illusion: governing the country and leveling the world is his own business, and what Cao Pi and Cao Ei can do, he can do better. He needed a way to vent, and it just so happened that the Cao family had a collection of many immortal spells, so he buried himself in researching a prescription for freeing the free soul from the shackles of the flesh - this is the ancient *** that was the favorite of literary and artistic young people later-Wushisan.

He Yan's luck was not bad, he only survived for six years, and Cao Rong also died. Sima Yi made an arrangement of "elite elimination" for the four auxiliary ministers of the posthumous edict, and drove out the capable Cao Yu and Cao Zhao, leaving only one Cao Shuang who was the best to deal with, and then watched this stupid reformist scream, waiting to catch him.

As an old buddy who shared weal and woe in the flashy case, Cao Shuang was really righteous enough to let He Yan take charge of the position of real power: the head of the organization and the secretary of the ministry.

But it's the last place he should be.

He Yan is a person who loves to come out and is too serious, and he is completely unsuitable for mixing officialdom. The position of the head of the organization is just the lubricant in the officialdom, and when he sees people talking about people, he talks nonsense, and when he sees that everyone is his own brother, he doesn't recognize anyone when he turns his head. But people often lack self-knowledge, life is only once, suitable or not, how to know if you haven't tried? He Yan probably had such a fluke mentality, and wanted to start a long-brewing "Zhengshi reform" in this position.

Reform has always been the easiest thing to provoke right and wrong, breaking the current balance, there will always be people whose interests are damaged, some openly jumping with you, some secretly playing conspiracy, and even an iron fist like Shang Ying has been torn apart. Therefore, throughout the ages, those who are determined to reform, whether they succeed or not, have not come to a good end.

He Yantai wanted to solve the problem of capable people in the opposition and not in the court since the end of the Han Dynasty, but he didn't know that this problem could not be solved. The people in the DPRK are not necessarily the most capable, but they are the right people who appear at the right time. The reason for the rejection of politics by the people is not that the system of electing officials is wrong, but that it cannot be optimal. However, politics is a product of balance, and it is inevitable that the mud or talented people will not be in their place. But He Yan can't, his arrogance determines his obsession with the best. Zhengshi reformed the system, narrowed the selection power of the state and county zhongzheng, and expanded the electoral power of the officials, with the aim of avoiding Sima Yi's influence at the local level and controlling more talents. They reformed the administrative apparatus by simplifying the state, county, and county administrative structures into the state and county levels. The first is to lay off redundant personnel, and the second is to expand the influence of the central government over the localities.

However, this reform was full of contradictions within the Wei state. The originally precarious factional balance was destroyed one after another in Cao Shuang's actions of inserting his own manpower, and Sima Yi, the old minister who was supposed to be in the formation, left to go home, putting on a look of ignoring it and waiting to see a good show. So the bad comments were turbid, and the first to bear the brunt was He Yan, the new secretary of the ministry.

At this time, this position was at the forefront of the struggle between the old-school celebrities and scholars of Shanglifa and the emerging celebrities of Shangtian: Cao Shuang transferred the original organization minister Lu Yu and inserted He Yan stiffly, but He Yan could not convince the public.

It's good to be famous, but there is no cutting-edge policy after the newcomers who talk about mysteries come to power: for He Yan, his personal life can be snorted, his family is wide open, and he treats his son and his son Huazi equally. But to govern this society, He Yan is obviously unimaginative. What he thought of was the Confucian set of ruling rituals, and Confucianism had really become He Yan's stick here. The contradiction between his personal life and his governance measures makes him seem like a man of false conscience and inconsistent words and deeds. He Yan had no choice: he was a scholar, proficient in both Confucianism and Taoism, but his learning had no metaphysical principles, which was embodied in his ignorance of how to embody the concept of the Tao he believed in everyday ethics, and in Hegel's words, he did not find a cosmic principle to guide the way down to the visible world. He wants a good society, and the only good social rules he can think of seem to be loyal to the emperor and benevolence, but this principle must be the father's kindness and filial piety in family life, and the righteousness, sincerity, self-cultivation, and abstinence in personal life. But he didn't want to go against his heart in his personal life, he despised the behavior of making fake benevolence and filial piety in the late Han Dynasty from the bottom of his heart, and his personal life was natural, casual, and even a little debauched. It made him look more like a hypocrite.

This painful problem that He Yan can't solve is a problem that everyone hasn't figured out since Jian'an Mingshi, so after the last Qingliu Kongrong disappeared in the late Han Dynasty, Jian'an Mingshi turned the ideal of benevolence and righteousness into literature: when the desire to practice the ideal succumbed to the nature of survival, it could only remain in a painful form on the wooden bamboo slips; Therefore, Cao Pi and Cao Ei both held high the banner of benevolence and righteousness, but they played the harsh punishment and strict law to the end. However, how can a belief that you don't believe in yourself make others believe it? Of course, you can think that "good old village, still natural" is the patent of high-level intellectuals, and the lower classes still have to rule with "benevolence and righteousness", but this is an unspeakable reason. The old inhuman manners are about to fall, but the new ones are not yet self-justifying. To solve this problem, we have to wait for the genius Wang Bi.

He Yan didn't have any more clever tricks than Lu Yu, so his reputation was more like a false name. Everyone sympathizes with the weak, and it is inevitable that they will not shout a few words of injustice for Lu Yu in the wilderness. What's more, Lu Yu himself is a very famous Confucian minister, who is courteous and polite, and later Sima Zhao wanted him to be equivalent to a civilized model, but Lu Yu insisted on giving it to Wang Xiang, who was more filial than himself. Such a person with a good social reputation stepped down for no reason, and the new official who could not make people shine naturally became the target of public criticism.

It's no wonder that Fu Yan, the waiter of the Yellow Gate at that time, wanted to complain: He Yan was quiet on the outside and restless on the inside, clever and profitable, and did not read the book, which confused Cao Shuang and Cao Xi, and the result was to let the benevolent people stay away from the court, and the government was wasted. What's more interesting is that Fu Yan gave the popular Xiahou Xuan, He Yan, and Deng Yang a sentence each, which are Zhida and talented, eloquent and insincere, and good and jealous. To sum it up, there is no such thing as a good thing. Some people say that this is Fu Yi's "hindsight" remarks after Cao Shuang's gang was cut down, but the words are not rough. Fu Yi represents the psychology of the meritorious faction who take etiquette and righteousness as the code of conduct: these young men have no real name, they can talk about it, but they can't do it in practice. So fame is a bad thing that is equivalent to flashiness and easy to get into trouble at this time. No wonder Li Feng became famous at a young age, but his father Li Yi disdained it, Zhuge Ke was young and famous, and his father Zhuge Jin was worried about it.

He Yan's treatment of Fu Yan is a small episode of the struggle between Sima Dang and Cao Shuang's gang, reflecting their differences in the basic ideas of dealing with the world and governing the country, and later Ji Kang, Shantao, Yanghu, Zhang Hua and Jia Chong, He Zeng continued until the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, in the final analysis, this is the reason.

It is said in the history books that Fu Yu was jealous of He Yan because of these words and was dismissed, and Lu Yu was also dismissed after several setbacks. Public opinion hates He Yan to death.

Unlike those slippery heads who pretend to be affectionate even if they pretend, He Yan has no intention of repairing with them. He still had to choose officials according to his own wishes, but the keen He Yan had already sensed the fragility of their ruling group.

Cao Shuang, like Cao Cao, is also a person who likes to eat and drink at public expense, and once summoned He Yan to eat, drink and have fun with the singers left by Tongquetai, but unfortunately Cao Cao's eating, drinking, and having fun Cao Shuang learned a seven, seven, eighty, eight, but Cao Cao's eloquence was roughly not inherited by him. Sima Yi just hid at home and stilted his feet to watch him turn the Wei State into a miasma.

Cao Shuang's right-hand man, Deng Yang, who was the emperor's secretary, was a big corrupt official, and a man named Zang Ai gave him his father's concubine, and Deng Yang immediately gave him a high-ranking official. The people of the time gave him a nickname, called "Deng Xuanmao, a woman who changed officials". Deng Yang accepted money from people and gave people official positions, making the court full of straw bales, and public opinion naturally pointed the finger at He Yan, the head of the organization. Corruption is not uncommon, but the regime has not yet sat firmly, and the reform has not yet been completed, and the Cao Shuang Gang is naturally scolded. In addition, Cao Shuang was anxious to make a meritorious career, overpowering the old minister Sima Yi, who had made a lot of achievements, and urged Xiahou Xuan to fight in Luogu and Shu at an inopportune time. Even Jiang Ji, who had an old friendship with Cao Shuang and his father, publicly scolded him for being a loser.

On the one hand, He Yan had to rely on Cao Shuang to realize his political ambitions, on the other hand, He Yan also felt that Cao Shuang's end was a matter of time, and when he was in a dilemma, he wrote two poems "Quasi-Ancient":

The bird swims with wings, and the group flies too clearly. I am often afraid of being caught in a snare, and once the disaster is combined. How can it be a collection of five lakes and duckweeds along the stream? What is the fear?

Turn the canopy to remove its roots, and the flow drifts from the wind. Mangmang's four seas, leisurely and beautiful? I am willing to send the pond for duckweed. And to rejoice today, and not to know after that.

"Often afraid of the snare, once the sorrow is combined", "and to enjoy today, and then do not know", the words all reveal the worry about the future, but he can't help it, giving up halfway is not his style, he can only go on hard.

In the first ten years, taking advantage of the fact that Cao Shuang took the little emperor Cao Fang to pay homage to the Gaoping Mausoleum of Emperor Wei Ming, Sima Yi closed the gate of Luoyang, announced Cao Shuang's crime of intending to be disobedient, and took his sons Sima Shi and Sima Zhao to occupy Luoyang's arsenal and important political organs. Cao Shuang, who lost the hearts of the people, did not get any support in Luoyang City, only Dasi Nong Huan Fan Jiaozhao went out to join him, suggesting that he flee to Yecheng to fight Sima Yi again. They have the emperor in their hands, the big seal, and some feudal officials, such as the Zhendong general Xiahou Xuan, who is still in their group. But Cao Shuang showed a cowardly look at this time, he said, it's a big deal if I go back and surrender, and I can be a rich man.

When he came back, he was naturally tied up and guillotined, and Deng Yang, Li Sheng, He Yan and Huan Fan were sentenced to the three clans along with him.

At the time of the coup d'état in Gao Pingling, He Yan was in Luoyang City. I don't know what he said, but after that, as soon as the pen of the history book turned, the story at the beginning appeared. However, looking at the two poems of He Yan before the coup d'état in Gaopingling, you really can't imagine that a person who knew that he would not be let go would be so naïve to seek exoneration in front of his political enemies. What's more, He Yan, such an arrogant person, refused Cao Cao's adoption, where would he beg Sima Yi to spare his life?