Speaking of Zeng Guofan, I'm sure everyone will be familiar with it. As an official of the late Qing Dynasty, he fought for a lifetime, not only quelling the Taiping Rebellion, but also suppressing other peasant movements such as the Nian Army. It can be said that he broke his heart to maintain the rule in the late Qing Dynasty. In the activities of suppressing the peasant uprising, the Xiang army led by Zeng Guofan was basically maintained by his own relationship, so he must also have a strict way of managing the family in the local area. In his later years, Zeng Guofan once revealed six words of managing the family when he was asked by outsiders, revealing his helplessness and bitterness. So what did he say?

According to the famous novelist Yi Zongkui's "The Theory of the New World", Zeng Guofan once played a joke with his aides when he was marching to fight: "I think that in today's imperial examination, besides setting up four subjects: virtue, literature, speech and politics, we should also set up a' no conscience' subject, because now we are fighting the peasant army, but we can't beat them by Confucius and Mencius alone. This reveals a life concept of Zeng Guofan, that is, if you want to achieve a great cause in the late Qing Dynasty, you must exile your conscience.

However, although he has so many philosophies about life, his strict teaching has not played much role in the next generation in terms of his family education level. For example, his eldest son, Ceng Jize Ming, accepted Zeng Guofan's strict teaching at an early age, but when he grew up, he went overseas to study in Russia and married a foreign daughter-in-law. In Zeng Guofan's view, this is absolutely against China's traditional ethical cognition, but at this time, Zeng Guofan has so much energy to put on the management of the next generation. For this matter, Zeng Guofan had to pretend not to see it.

The most incredible thing is that it is clear that Zeng Guofan himself is proficient in Confucius and Mencius and takes it as his family education principle, but in his later years, he abandoned all these decades of experience. According to the Record of Summer in a Rain Window, Zeng Guofan's good friends Wu Minshu and Guo Songtao once specifically asked his famous sayings about managing the family. I saw Zeng Guofan, who was old, shaking his head with a wry smile, and then reluctantly said six words: "Don't believe in books, believe in luck."

In fact, Zeng Guofan is superstitious about the so-called destiny and luck, but there are different changes at different ages. For example, in the prime of life, Zeng Guofan once said: "My reputation, achievements and articles all come from luck, but without good self-confidence, luck is unreliable." Although in the prime of life, Zeng Guofan emphasized that self-confidence was the key point, but in old age, his self-confidence was gradually exhausted. In fact, it's no wonder that when he looks back on his life, he will basically be scared into a cold sweat by his original choice. If he makes a wrong step, he will lose the game. Therefore, Zeng Guofan's 6-word famous saying about running a family is contradictory to what he has learned all his life, but it is also a portrayal of his life.