Liu Xu

Life

He came of the Liu family of Shouguang: his great-grandfather was Liu Rang, his grandfather Liu Liangzuo, and his father Liu Bing, while his mother was a woman of the Li family. He had two elder brothers, Liu Huan and Liu Xun, and three younger brothers, Liu Ting, Liu Wan and Liu Yue; he married a woman of the Zhang family, and he was the third son in order of birth. He was a prefectural school student and then a student of the National Academy, passed the provincial examination, and in 1448, the thirteenth year of the Zhengtong era, obtained the jinshi degree, ranking thirty-third in the second class.

He was chosen as a Hanlin bachelor (shujishi) and appointed a compiler (bianxiu) of the Hanlin Academy, afterwards becoming a senior compiler (xiuzhuan). In the Tianshun era he served as a Right Assistant Director of the Right Spring Chancellery and lectured the heir apparent, the future Chenghua Emperor. After the Chenghua Emperor came to the throne he served successively as vice-minister and then chief minister of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices and as a reader (shidu xueshi) of the Hanlin Academy.

In 1474, the tenth year of the Chenghua era, he was advanced to Left Vice-Minister of Personnel and appointed an imperial lecturer; the following year he was made concurrently a Hanlin academician and entered the Wenyuan Pavilion, taking part in the business of the Grand Secretariat. Liu Xu lectured with great care, and the Hanlin academician Liu Dingzhi called him the first among the imperial lecturers, so that the emperor esteemed him and addressed him as "Mr. Liu of the East" (Dongliu xiansheng). He afterwards became Minister of Personnel and Minister of Revenue, received the title of Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent, and was made concurrently Grand Secretary of the Wenyuan Pavilion; when the Wenhua daxun was completed he received the title of Guardian of the Heir Apparent and was advanced to Grand Secretary of the Jinshen Hall. He also served as a reader of palace examination papers, as an examiner at the metropolitan examination, as a lecturer at the classics colloquium and as a compiler of official works.

In the Grand Secretariat he was known for his personal integrity. When the bureau vice-director Lin Jun was imprisoned for impeaching the eunuch Liang Fang and the monk Jixiao, it was Liu Xu who secured his release; and when the Daoist Li Zixing disturbed the government and sought to undermine the position of the heir apparent, Liu Xu too sent up a secret memorial of remonstrance, but his plan was inadequate and the memorial could not be delivered.

The Grand Secretariat then had three members: Wan An, greedy and cunning; Liu Ji, sinister and treacherous; and Liu Xu, who with the other two was known as one of the "three paper-paste grand secretaries". Liu Xu was on bad terms with Wan An and once denounced him as a shameless betrayer of the state, and the quarrel lasted many years. In 1482, the eighteenth year of Chenghua, Wan An memorialised for the abolition of the Western Depot, but Liu Xu was unwilling to sign the memorial jointly with him, and Wan An and Liu Ji then conspired to accuse him secretly of communicating with Wang Zhi; in the end Liu Xu lost power and retired, his tenure as Minister of Revenue and Grand Secretary of the Jinshen Hall coming to an end in 1485, the twenty-first year of Chenghua. Contemporaries held Liu Xu to be somewhat better than the other two, but he gave himself up to attacking others and was regarded as a man of violent temper; after his hurried withdrawal Peng Hua and Yin Zhi entered the Grand Secretariat in succession, and the government remained in the hands of the faction of Wan An and Liu Ji.

Liu Xu had earlier gone into mourning for his mother and lived for three years in a hut at her grave; on returning home he served his father with complete filial devotion, and when his father died he again lived at the grave. He died in 1490, the third year of Hongzhi, and was posthumously granted the title of Grand Guardian and the posthumous name Wenhe. In the early Jiajing period, at the request of censorial officials, his shrine was granted the tablet name "Zhaoxian", and officials were still sent to sacrifice there.

Associates and works

Liu Xu was also a calligrapher; he composed epitaphs for Cheng Xin, Ni Qian, Han Yong, Zhou Xuan, Cui Gong and Ma Ang, and spirit-way steles for Li Gang, Lin Cong, Zhang Gang and Dong Fang. He Qiaoxin once addressed a letter to him, Xu Pu praised his conduct in office, and Cui Xian wrote a record for his shrine. His writings include the Guzhi xiansheng ji in sixteen juan, also recorded as the Guzhi ji and the Liu Guzhi ji; the Huanyu tongzhi, the Wenhua daxun, the Veritable Records of the Yingzong Emperor and the Continuation of the Zizhi tongjian gangmu are likewise associated with his name. His name is also recorded in the Mingshi jishi and in the Yuxuan mingshi xingming jueli.