Early Life
Born as a native of Xiangxiang (湘乡), Hunan in 1811, Zeng Zicheng (曾子城) was the grandson of Zeng Yuping, a prosperous farmer with social and political ambitions. As a youth, Zeng was notorious for living drunkenly and even experimenting with opium; choices he would later renounce as he became an ardent military man. He studied in Yuelu Academy in Changsha. He passed the prefectural examination in 1833, only a year after his father Zeng Linshu (zi Zhuting). He passed the provincial examination a year later, and by 1838, at age 27, he had successfully passed the metropolitan examinations, a prestigious achievement in China. He had earned the Jinshi degree, the highest level in the civil service examinations, which led to his appointment to the Hanlin Academy, a body of outstanding Chinese literary scholars who performed literary tasks for the imperial court. It was at Hanlin where he changed his name to Zeng Guofan, which sounded more prestigious. Zeng served in Beijing for more than 13 years, and remained devoted to the interpretation of the Confucian Classics. He moved relatively quickly up the ranks by his teacher Manchu statesman Mujangga, advancing to 2nd-Pin in five years.
Read more about this topic: Zeng Guofan
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it, and when he can.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)