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Yu Que
Tangut scholar-official of the late Yuan, a jinshi of 1333, who held Anqing against the rebels for six years and cut his own throat when the city fell in 1358
A walled hilltop city with a tall brick gate tower stands above a pine-covered cliff, its wall running along the ridge, while a long wooden bridge crosses a wide river below and plains, islets and layered mountains stretch into the distance, with no person in view.
Also known as Zi Tingxin · Hao Qingyang
Yu Que, courtesy names Tingxin and Tianxin, was a Tangut whose forebears had lived at Wuwei in the Hexi corridor; his father held office at Luzhou, and the family settled there. Left fatherless young, he supported his mother by teaching, became a jinshi in 1333 and served at Sizhou and then at court. In 1352, as deputy pacification commissioner of Huaixi, he took a detachment to hold Anqing, set his soldiers to farming, and beat off repeated attacks by Zhao Pusheng and others, earning promotion to assistant administrator of the province. Chen Youliang came down the river against the city in the tenth month of 1357, and when Anqing fell early the next year Yu cut his throat and fell into the Qingshui pond, while his wife and children threw themselves into a well; he was fifty-five. The Yuan court named him Duke of Bin with the posthumous name Zhongxuan, and the first Ming emperor ordered a shrine for him at Anqing.
Life and times
Dates 1303 CE–1358 CE